Earth Observation Data and Geospatial Deep Learning AI to Assign Contributions to European Municipalities Sen4MUN: An Empirical Application in Aosta Valley (NW Italy)

Abstract

Nowadays, European program Copernicus’ Sentinel missions have allowed the development of several application services. In this regard, to strengthen the use of free satellite data in ordinary administrative workflows, this work aims to evaluate the feasibility and prototypal development of a possible service called Sen4MUN for the distribution of contributions yearly allocated to local municipalities and scalable to all European regions. The analysis was focused on the Aosta Valley region, North West Italy. A comparison between the Ordinary Workflow (OW) and the suggested Sen4MUN approach was performed. OW is based on statistical survey and municipality declaration, while Sen4MUN is based on geospatial deep learning techniques on aerial imagery (to extract roads and buildings to get real estate units) and yearly Land Cover map components according to European EAGLE guidelines. Both methods are based on land cover components which represent the input on which the financial coefficients for assigning contributions are applied. In both approaches, buffers are applied onto urban class (LCb). This buffer was performed according to the EEA-ISPRA soil consumption guidelines to avoid underestimating some areas that are difficult to map. In the case of Sen4MUN, this is applied to overcome Sentinel sensor limits and spectral mixing issues, while in the case of OW, this is due to limits in the survey method itself. Finally, a validation was performed assuming as truth the approach defined by law as the standard, i.e., OW, although it has limitations. MAEs involving LCb, road lengths and real estate units demonstrate the effectiveness of Sen4MUN. The developed approach suggests a contribution system based on Geomatics and Remote sensing to the public administration.