An advanced classifier for the joint use of LiDAR and hyperspectral data: Case study in Queensland, Australia

With respect to the exponential increase in the number of available remote sensors in recent years, the possibility of having different types of data captured over the same scene, has resulted in many research works related to the joint use of passive and active sensors for the accurate classification of different materials. However, until now, there is a small number of research works related to the integration of highly valuable information obtained from the joint use of LiDAR and hyperspectral data. This paper proposes an efficient classification approach in terms of accuracies and demanded CPU processing time for integrating big data sets (e.g., LiDAR and hyperspectral) to provide land cover mapping capabilities at a range of spatial scales. In addition, the proposed approach is fully automatic and is able to efficiently handle big data containing a huge number of features with very limited number of training samples in few seconds.