Geometrical and Topological Urban Areas Characterization using TerraSAR-X Data

With the launch of the German TerraSAR-X system in June 2007, a new generation of high-resolution spaceborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data is available; which should facilitate the interpretation of urban environments. This article proposes a new automatic tool for geometric and topological urban areas characterization. Our approach is divided into three main steps. First, a bright linear structures detector is applied to extract the geometrical information. Then, a graph-based spatial characterization is used to model the topological relationships between the different detected bright pixels (nodes). Next, a classification by examining the profile of the distributions of the angles between neighboring nodes, is performed in order to label the linked structures. Evaluations of the proposed approach in characterizing the geometry and topology of urban areas were carried out using TerraSAR-X data over three different cities: Las Vegas in the United States, Paris in France and Cairo in Egypt.