Monitoring road infrastructure from satellite images in Greater Maputo

Repository for the paper: "Monitoring road infrastructure from satellite images in Greater Maputo" Published in Statistical Methods and Applications – DOI: 10.1007/s10260-024-00772-y

Authors: Arianna Burzacchi, Matteo Landrò, Simone Vantini

Overview

Road infrastructure conditions significantly impact transport operations, yet information on pavement surface types is rarely available in developing countries. This project addresses this gap by developing an automatic classification method using:

• Google Earth satellite images of road networks
• OpenStreetMap (OSM) road network data
• DBSCAN clustering for image segmentation
• Object-oriented k-NN classification algorithm

The approach was validated on the Greater Maputo area in Mozambique, achieving:

• 88.1% overall accuracy using satellite images only
• 94.5% accuracy when including street type information

Repository structure

maputo-road-classification/
├── README.md
├── LICENSE
├── data/             # Input data (NOT included)
│   ├── raster/
│   └── shapefile/
├── preprocessed-data/   # Intermediate output (NOT included)
│   └── cpp-elaboration/
├── output/           # Results of the pavement classification 
│   ├── k-nn_only_images
│   └── k-nn_images_and_type
├── scripts/          # All R scripts used in the analysis
│   ├── utils/        # Utility functions
│   ├── .R
├── renv/             # Virtual R environment managed by renv(NOT included)
├── renv.lock         # Snapshot of all required R packages
├── .Rprofile         # Activates renv on project startup
└── .gitignore

Requirements

Software Dependencies

R >= 4.0.5

How to run

Initialization

1. Clone the repository from bash:

   git clone https://github.com/araiari/maputo-pavement-classification.git
   cd maputo-pavement-classification

2. Install R dependencies from R:

   install.packages("renv")   # if not already installed
   renv::restore()

📚 Citation

If you use this code in your research, please cite:

@misc{burzacchi2025maputo,
  author       = {Burzacchi, Arianna and Vantini, Simone},
  title        = {maputo-road-classification: code reference for the paper "Monitoring road infrastructure from satellite images in Greater Maputo"},
  year         = {2025},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/araiari/maputo-road-classidication}},
  url          = {\url{https://github.com/araiari/maputo-road-classidication}}
}