Abstract: It is still an open problem to extract residential area from remotely sensed image,although there have been a lot efforts put in this area.This paper reviews the state-of-the-art of three key problems related to the residential area extraction：the quantitative description of residential areas in remotely sensed image,extraction models and accuracy assessment methods.And the characteristics of these methods are analyzed.Finally,research issues are recommended for future studies.

摘要： 从遥感影像中提取居民地已有许多研究,但仍存在许多问题有待解决。针对与居民地提取相关的三个关键问题（居民地影像特征的定量描述、居民地遥感提取模型和提取结果的精度评价）的国内外研究现状分别进行了较全面地综述,介绍了具有代表性的方法,并对各种方法的特点进行了分析,最后对居民地提取的相关研究进行了展望。