The goal of the LC-CMS use case is to perform fully automated, efficient, and repeatable global Land Cover (LC) mapping for small and mid-scale features. It is a generic GEM use case which shows global Continuous Monitoring capabilities of the GEM project. LC-CMS use case is of special interest to TomTom as it provides a more efficient, scalable, and maintainable alternative to the previous TomTom LC production pipeline (Earth Cover Engine) based on the capabilities of eo-learn.

To achieve this objective, an end-to-end machine learning based pipeline was built, capable of detecting Level 2 land classes of GEM Taxonomy using mid and low-resolution Sentinel-2 spectral bands. The pipeline was developed using eo-grow and eo-learn frameworks (GEM processing framework) developed by Sinergise. eo-grow in particular allows to easily scale-up and distribute the workload.

We demonstrate the results obtained over Africa in a lightweight web demonstrator app:

The following table list and describes all the layers for LC-CMS viewer:

Layer Name

Layer Type

Description

LC-CMS Prediction results at 120m, 60m & 20m

Results Layer

(Prediction)

Results for predictions performed at 120m, 60m & 20m.

LCMS Pilot 120m 2019, LCMS Pilot 120m 2020, LCMS Pilot 120m 2021

Results Layer

(Prediction)

Prediction results for the Pilot region performed by LC-CMS pipeline using S2 at 120m for 2019, 2020 and 2021.

LCMS Change 2019-2020, LCMS Change 2020-2021, LCMS Change 2019-2021

Results Layer

(Change Detection)

Change detection by comparing predictions performed by LC-CMS pipeline using S2 at 120m for 2019, 2020 and 2021, over the years.

TomTom Base Map

Reference Layer

TomTom base map raster layer.

OSM Layer

Reference Layer

OSM (Open Steet Map) raster base map layer.

Cloudless Satellite Imagery

Reference Layer

Pre-processed Cloudless Viewing Ready (RGB) global product created from Sentinel-2 mission for years 2019, 2020, 2021.

World Cover 10m

Validation Layer

The European Space Agency (ESA)’s World Cover maps which is global land cover map with 11 different land cover classes produced at 10m resolution based on combination of both Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data.

Global-LC 100m

Validation Layer

100m LC product delivered by Copernicus for years 2015-2019.

 

LC-CMS Viewer has following features:

  1. Layer Selection: At the top right side of the app, there is a layer panel with the list of layers which can be visualized in the viewer. The checked layers will be visualized and rendered in the order they are appear in the list. So, if the only first checkbox is checked, it will be displayed on the map, but if both the first and the third checkboxes are checked, they will both be rendered, but only third will be visible as it is rendered on top of the first. All layers will be rendered on top of the base map, which can be changed using radio buttons.
  2. Layer Opacity: When a layer is selected, it can be made opaque by dragging the slider to the left shown with the layer name in the opacity control. When a layer is opaque, the layer rendered right underneath it, will be visible. If no other layer is selected, then base map is shown.
  3. Vector Layer buttons: Some Vector layers also present in the map and can be selected by clicking the buttons present on the top right-hand corner of the page. They are always rendered on top of all the existing layers.
  4. Address Search: There’s a search bar icon on the top right-hand corner that enables searching for any address on the map. This is usually helpful when you need to navigate quickly to a location.
  5. Zoom Control: There are zoom control buttons on the top left-hand corner to zoom in and out of the map.
  6. Map Legend: Information about the colours used to represent land cover can be viewed by clicking on the map legend button at the bottom right. The same colour can mean different things depending on the type of layer, so it is best to check the legend.

 

The types of layers shown on the map are:

  1. Results Layer: Raster prediction results
  2. Vector Layer: Vectorized results or AOI (Area of Interest) reference
  3. Validation Layer: Results from other vendors for comparison
  4. Reference Layer: Base map or satellite imagery to show ground truth