Identification and Area Measurement of the Built-up Area with the Built-up Index (BUI)

The calculation and determination of the built-up area with the highest possible accuracy is of major importance in urban, suburban and agricultural studies. Until present, different methodologies of satellite image processing in their multispectral space (eg pixel-based classification) have been developed and used in Remote Sensing, allowing the identification and area measurement of the built-up area with very high accuracy. Accordingly, the indexes that have been developed are able to provide the identification and area measurement of the built-up area immediately and quickly, but with less space and measuring accuracy than other methodologies. In this paper the main indexes that are used in Remote Sensing are initially presented. Afterwards, a new index, BUI (Built-Up Index), is presented, whose development is based on the combination of the bands of Landsat ETM+: RED (band 3), SWIR1 (band 5) and SWIR2 (band 7). Its comparison with other indexes takes place in the urban, suburban and agricultural area of a Greek city, and its effectiveness is tested in four other cities (in Greece and Palestine). The results are encouraging, since this index allows the identification of the built-up area more accurately than the others. Finally, the accuracy of area measurement of the built-up area approaches accuracies obtained with other methodologies of Remote Sensing.