GIS 4035 

This week completed an exercise that calculated the accuracy of our photo interpretations. The first part of our assignment had us classify Land use and land cover using a true color aerial image. We created a new feature class and classified the entire area of the aerial image based on textures, patterns and associations. The second part of our assignment led us to test the accuracy of the land use/land cover designations that we made previously. We created a second feature class and digitized 30 points within the area of the provided aerial image. We used Google Maps to carry out ex-situ (offsite) ground truthing. The street views in Google Maps allowed us to see areas in a similar way that we would if we were actually in-situ (at the site). 

Once I completed the exercise I came up with only a 53% accuracy in my assessments. One of my major issues was that I classified a few areas as forest when they were actually just highly vegetated residential areas. My most accurate assessment was that of commercial and retail establishments. It was fairly easy to pick out commercial or retail sites. Commercial and retail sites are typically large buildings associated with large parking areas and large streets. Below is my resulting map.