Object Fate Analysis – a Virtual Overlay Method for the Categorisation of Object Transition and Object-based Accuracy Assessment

Land use often changes considerably due to shifts in political and societal systems. The border zone between Austria and Hungary (the former Iron Curtain zone) is an outstanding example for these socio-politically driven changes of land use patterns. This paper discusses a methodology to assess temporal changes, which occurred in three 2500 ha test sites near Lake Fertő between 1985 (t0) and 2000 (t1), regarding altered arrangements of agricultural fields. By using Landsat TM and ETM+ imagery, changes were evaluated and quantified field-specific, i.e. comparing the spatial characteristics of t0 and t1 fields and categorizing their ‘fate’ through time. Object fate analysis has been used to examine spatial changes of the t0 fields by investigating the topological relationships between t0 and t1 fields. Two indices, object loyalty (OL) and interference (I), were introduced as field-specific measures to characterise field stability. * Corresponding author.