Satellite thermal IR imagery for accessing the environmental impact of transportation

摘要

Satellite images of the Earth acquired in the thermal infrared range contain valuable information about the properties of objects on the Earth's surface, the significance of which increases in the context of climate change. To make this information accessible to many people including laymen, it is necessary not only to extract it from images, but also to present it in an obvious visual form. The goal of this research is to identify the thermal radiation generated by rail transport, assess the stability of this radiation through the seasons, and develop a method for visualizing thermal anomalies generated by rail transport in the places where it accumulates. The technique is based on TIRS Landsat 8 images use, acquired in different seasons. The images for 18 selected transport nodes were used firstly to calculate surface temperature for each period. The resulted images of a thermal field were combined with the corresponding highresolution images to determine objects that contribute to the high-temperature anomalies at the nodes. The stability of thermal anomalies for each node was estimated by summarizing the raster thermal maps of different seasons. The comparative analysis of preprocessed thermal images of transport nodes, located in different climatic and economic conditions, shows that the thermal effect is much more evident if a node is located outside a city, whereas the latitudinal position of a node has a significantly smaller effect. Finally, the selected transport nodes were classified according to the degree of intensity and permanency during a year.