Urban change monitoring from multi-temporal TerraSAR-X images

Monitoring urban growth and change is an important issue for urban planning and disaster management. In this study, three temporal TerraSAR-X images are used to monitor the urban changes. The difference and correlation coefficient between two images are calculated with a sliding window. Then a new factor that composites the difference and correlation coefficient is proposed to detect the changes. The Tokyo international airport expansion construction is used as a case study. The urban changes due to the progress of the construction are detected by the proposed approach. Then an aerial photograph taken during the construction and the visually detected results are used to verify the accuracy of the results.