Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with high-resolution multispectral cameras have increasingly been used in urban planning, landscape management, and environmental monitoring as an important complement to traditional satellite remote sensing systems. Interest in urban regeneration projects is on the rise in Korea, and the results of UAV-based urban vegetation analysis are in the spotlight as important data to effectively promote urban regeneration projects. Vegetation indices have been used to obtain vegetation information in a wide area using the multispectral bands of satellites. UAV images have recently been used to obtain vegetation information in a more rapid and precise manner. In this study, multispectral images were acquired using a UAV equipped with a Micasense RedEde MX camera to analyze vegetation indices, such as the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Green Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (GNDVI), Blue Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (BNDVI), Red Green Blue Vegetation Index (RGBVI), Green Red Vegetation Index (GRVI), and Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI). However, in the process of analyzing urban vegetation using the existing vegetation indices, it became clear that the vegetation index values of long-run steel roofing, waterproof coated roofs, and urethane-coated areas are often similar to, or slightly higher than, those of grass. In order to improve the problem of misclassification of vegetation, various equations were tested by combining multispectral bands. Kappa coefficient analysis showed that the squared Red-Blue NDVI index produced the best results when analyzing vegetation reflecting urban land cover. The novel vegetation index developed in this study will be very useful for effective analysis of vegetation in urban areas with various types of land cover, such as long-run steel roofing, waterproof coated roofs, and urethane-coated areas.

Vegetation has become very important decision-making information in promoting tasks such as urban regeneration, urban planning, environment, and landscaping. In the past, the vegetation index was calculated by combining images of various wavelength regions mainly acquired from the Landsat satellite’s TM or ETM+ sensor. Recently, a technology using UAV-based multispectral images has been developed to obtain more rapid and precise vegetation information. NDVI is a method of calculating the vegetation index by combining the red and near-infrared bands, and is currently the most widely used. In this study, NDVI was calculated using UAV-based multispectral images to classify vegetation. However, among the areas analyzed using NDVI, there was a problem that areas coated with urethane, such as basketball courts and waterproof coating roofs, were classified as vegetation areas. In order to examine these problems, the reflectance of each land cover was investigated using the ASD FieldSpec4 spectrometer. As a result of analyzing the spectrometer measurements, the NDVI values of basketball courts and waterproof coating roofs were similar to those of grass with slightly lower vegetation. To solve this problem, the temperature characteristics of the target site were analyzed using UAV-based thermal infrared images, and vegetation area was analyzed by combining the temperature information with NDVI. To evaluate the accuracy of the vegetation classification technology, 4409 verification points were selected, and kappa coefficients were analyzed for the method using only NDVI and the method using NDVI and thermal infrared images. Compared to the kappa coefficient of 0.830, which was analyzed by applying only NDVI, the kappa coefficient, which was analyzed by combining NDVI and thermal infrared images, was 0.934, which was higher. Therefore, it is very effective to apply a technology that classifies vegetation by combining NDVI and thermal infrared images in urban areas with many urethane-coated land cover such as basketball courts or waterproof coating roofs.