%0 Journal Article %T A Reliability-Based Multi-Algorithm Fusion Technique in Detecting Changes in Land Cover %A Penglin Zhang %A Wenzhong Shi %A Man Sing Wong %A Jiangping Chen %J Remote Sensing %D 2013 %I MDPI AG %R 10.3390/rs5031134 %X Detecting land use or land cover changes is a challenging problem in analyzing images. Change-detection plays a fundamental role in most of land use or cover monitoring systems using remote-sensing techniques. The reliability of individual automatic change-detection algorithms is currently below operating requirements when considering the intrinsic uncertainty of a change-detection algorithm and the complexity of detecting changes in remote-sensing images. In particular, most of these algorithms are only suited for a specific image data source, study area and research purpose. Only a number of comprehensive change-detection methods that consider the reliability of the algorithm in different implementation situations have been reported. This study attempts to explore the advantages of combining several typical change-detection algorithms. This combination is specifically designed for a highly reliable change-detection task. Specifically, a fusion approach based on reliability is proposed for an exclusive land use or land cover change-detection. First, the reliability of each candidate algorithm is evaluated. Then, a fuzzy comprehensive evaluation is used to generate a reliable change-detection approach. This evaluation is a transformation between a one-way evaluation matrix and a weight vector computed using the reliability of each candidate algorithm. Experimental results reveal that the advantages of combining these distinct change-detection techniques are evident. %K reliability %K change-detection %K multi-algorithm fusion %K fuzzy technique %U http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/5/3/1134