SOLAR PANELS AREA ESTIMATION USING THE SPACEBORNE IMAGING SPECTROMETER DESIS: OUTPERFORMING MULTISPECTRAL SENSORS

Abstract. Solar photovoltaic power plants are in rapid expansion throughout the world, with the total area occupied by panels being linked to the total electrical power produced. This paper considers this case as an instance of the generic problem of estimating the total area occupied by a class of interest in spaceborne hyperspectral images. As the spatial resolution characterizing these sensors is too coarse, spectral unmixing techniques identify the contribution of a specific material to the spectrum related to a single image element. Final results are obtained by summing all contributions in an area of interest, and favourably compared to pixel-based detection, also using higher resolution Sentinel-2 data. The data used in this paper are acquired by the currently operative DESIS sensor, mounted on the International Space Station, encouraging the use of spaceborne imaging spectrometers for such applications.