The iota2 Land cover processor has processed some Sentinel-2 data

=> You already heard about iota2 processor, and you must know that it can process LANDSAT 8 time series et deliver land cover maps for whole countries. These las days, Arthur Vincent completed the code that allows processing Sentinel-2 time series. Even if atmospherically corrected Sentinel-2 data are not yet available above the whole France, we used  the demonstration products delivered by Theia to test our processor. Everything seems to work fine, and the 10 m resolution of Sentinel-2 seems to allow seeing much more details. The joined images show two extracts near Avignon, in Provence, which show the differences between Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2. Please just look only at the detail level, and not at the differences in terms of classes. Both maps were produces using different time periods, and a period limited to winter and beginning of spring for Sentinel-2, and the learning database is also different. Please don,’t draw conclusions too fast about the thematic quality of the maps. First extract shows a natural vegetation zone, with some farmland (top LANDSAT8, bottom Sentinel-2)

The second extract shows the Rhone, Durance rivers, and the town of Avignon. You have probably noticed that the bridges can be seen, while they could not be classified in LANDSAT 8 data. And as there is a very famous French song about Avignon bridge (Sur le pont d’Avignon, on y danse on y danse), we know Sentinel-2 is right. 

 Using 10m resolution data, together with 12 spectral bands sharply increases computation time, compared to LANDSAT 8. But thankfully, we have also optimized a part of the processing (computing the input features), which uses now a specific OTB application. The new application is much faster and reduces the amount of internal data. As usual, the new version of iota2 processor, with these improvements can be downloaded here.