Capability of high resolution satellite images to characterize urban surfaces: spectra comparison and correlation with in field/lab measurements

Environmental remote sensing is an increasingly useful tool for the study of large areas thanks to new sensors with high spatial resolution. These sensors could be able to identify and analyse several urban surfaces, like roofs and pavements. Thus they could be used to study urban areas for several applications, as the characterization of different surfaces related to the development of the UHI (Urban Heat Island) phenomenon. The main goal of this paper is to study the spectral correlation between this kind of satellite imagery (high spatial resolution and good spectral resolution) and ground measurements using instruments with high spectral resolution. For this purpose, an image from WorldView 3 sensor was acquired and several spectra of urban surfaces were measured with the ASD FieldSpec 4 field spectroradiometer. The study area is the ceramic district of Sassuolo, in the northern part of Italy. Statistic parameters were used to assess the differences between acquired spectra and satellite image spectra. The achieved results are encouraging: remote sensing could characterize the correlation between remote sensing data and ground measurement is high for homogenous surfaces.