Map Accuracy Tools is an online website for calculating accuracy metrics for land cover products and for exploring thematic map accuracy.

Map Accuracy Tools © IIASA

Map Accuracy Tools

The Map Accuracy Tools website was developed to facilitate the calculation of accuracy metrics related to the development of land cover maps from remote sensing. When land cover maps are validated, the ground truth data are compared with the values from the classified map, and a confusion matrix is then produced.

Users can upload their confusion matrix to the website and a range of different accuracy statistics will be calculated. More advanced users can download the R source code and run it locally. The tool can also be used in a teaching capacity to help students understand the concepts of map accuracy assessment.

A second motivation for the development of this tool was related to observations made by Salk et al. (2018) regarding common mistakes and pitfalls that occur in thematic map accuracy assessment.

The tool comes with two example confusion matrices for users to play around with, classes can be merged to see the effect (e.g., the deciduous and evergreen forest classes can be merged into a single forest class) or users can read the paper by Salk et al. (2018) and learn more about good and bad practices related to accuracy assessment. Such examples can also be incorporated into higher education curricula on remote sensing.

For users who want the complete validation workflow, i.e., uploading a land cover map, generating a statistically robust validation sample, interpreting the sample using very high-resolution imagery, and producing an accuracy assessment report, are referred to the LACO-Wiki tool for this additional functionality.

Go to the Map Accuracy Tools

 

LACO-WIKI PROJECT

Publications

Salk, C., Fritz, S. , See, L. , Dresel, C., & McCallum, I. (2018). An Exploration of Some Pitfalls of Thematic Map Assessment Using the New Map Tools Resource. Remote Sensing 10 (3) p. 376. 10.3390/rs10030376.

See, L. , Laso Bayas, J.C. , Schepaschenko, D. , Perger, C., Dresel, C., Maus, V. , Salk, C., Weichselgartner, J., Lesiv, M. , McCallum, I. , Moorthy, I., & Fritz, S. (2017). LACO-Wiki: A New Online Land Cover Validation Tool Demonstrated Using GlobeLand30 for Kenya. Remote Sensing 9 (7) e754. 10.3390/rs9070754.