High Precision Mapping Of Building Changes Using Sentinel-2

Jonathan Prexl, Sudipan Saha, Michael Schmitt

Abstract: In the field of urban monitoring, accurate mapping of building structures and the corresponding changes is one of the most essential pieces of information. In many cases, this problem is approached with very high-resolution images, needed due to the spatial complexity in urban environments. And still, many binary change detection (CD) methods cannot segregate the changes introduced by the generation of new building structures from seasonal changes or other semantic changes. In this paper, we investigate a simple approach for building CD from freely available Sentinel-2 images, that neither depends on high-resolution imagery nor is prone to be negatively affected by seasonal changes. The proposed approach is simple and mainly based on the utilization of Sentinel-2 and existing corresponding building footprint information. We discuss in detail all the necessary steps to produce sub-resolution CD maps and shine a light on the critical influence of georeferencing correction.