EBBI: Separating Built-Up From Bare Land Using Heat
Built-up surfaces and bare soil look almost identical in the optical bands — which is why NDBI keeps confusing them. EBBI breaks the tie by adding a thermal term: cities run hotter than bare ground, and the index listens for that.
The idea behind it
The SWIR–NIR numerator captures the built-up/bare signal, while the thermal band in the denominator injects surface-temperature information that pulls warm impervious surfaces apart from cooler exposed soil.
How it is calculated
where SWIR1 is shortwave-infrared 1 reflectance (~1.6 µm), NIR is near-infrared reflectance, TIR is thermal-infrared brightness temperature.
What the numbers mean
Higher = built-up or bare. The thermal term helps separate warm built-up surfaces from cooler bare land.
Band configuration
| Sentinel-2 | SWIR1 B11 · NIR B8 · TIR — n/a |
| Landsat 8/9 | SWIR1 B6 · NIR B5 · TIR B10 |
Where it is used
It is applied in urban mapping where distinguishing new construction from cleared or fallow land is the whole point — peri-urban expansion and land-conversion monitoring.
Limitations to know
EBBI needs a thermal band, so it is Landsat-only (TIR = B10); Sentinel-2 cannot compute it. Landsat's thermal band is natively ~100 m, so EBBI is coarser than its optical cousins, and very hot bare surfaces such as dry salt pans can still masquerade as built-up.
Compute EBBI on your own study area
Skip the code. Draw or upload a boundary and Spatial Research Suite runs EBBI on live Sentinel-2 or Landsat imagery — with cloud masking, exports and citations built in.
Run this analysis in GISforus →Frequently asked
Can EBBI be computed from Sentinel-2?
No — Sentinel-2 carries no thermal band. EBBI needs Landsat 8/9 (thermal band B10).
Why add a thermal band to a built-up index?
Built-up surfaces are typically warmer than bare soil, so the thermal term helps separate the two classes that optical bands alone confuse.