Table 8 Examples of application of unsupervised classification techniques towards SDGs using EO data

SGD 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities)

Land cover

Used and compared three methods to classify ground vegetation covers using data acquired by IKONOS satellite. The comparison demonstrated that all methods are very accurate (more than 90% of accuracy); however, the two-step method achieved the best results

[147]

Land change

Proposed an unsupervised method with an OB approach to improve the detection of changes using high-resolution images. This methodology achieved better results in comparison to other methods

[148]

SGD 15 (Life on Land)

Invasive plants

Developed an unsupervised method to detect and map invasive plants using RFs, which proved to be a successful approach

[149]

Landslide

Compared an unsupervised PB and OB approach for landslide detection using VHR images and concluded that OB performed better than PB

[150]