Detection of Swimming Pools by Geographic Object-based Image Analysis to Support West Nile Virus Control Efforts.

The recent economic crisis in United States has led to an increase in home foreclosures and subsequent abandonments. A by-product of this trend has been an associated rise in the number of neglected swimming pools, which provide new habitats for the larval stages of the Culex mosquito vectors of West Nile Virus (WNV) in urban and suburban environments. WNV has been major concern related to neglected swimming pools in California. Our research focused on using very high spatial resolution (VHR) satellite imagery and processing techniques, including image pansharpening, normalized difference water index, and geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA), to develop a geographic information system (GIS) database of swimming pool locations. This research demonstrated that GEOBIA with VHR imagery could produce a GIS database of swimming pools with the high accuracy of 94 percent. The analytic approach of this research is expected to economically facilitate the location of swimming pools for ground inspection and mosquito control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]