Potential of ERS-1 images for characterization and detection of man-made structures: Road network and urban areas

The resolution of ERS-1 images should let us detect man-made structures like roads and urban areas. After a brief survey of the captor response to these objects, we propose two methods to detect them: one to extract the main axes of the road network, and the other one to extract urban areas. We illustrate the results obtained for the load detection on 3 typical landscapes: flat and agricultural landscapes, hilly ones, and tropical ones, and we show how difficulties increase with the presence of relief. Some urban detections are presented both on European towns and Guyana ones.