scholarly journals Integrated Change Detection and Classification in Urban Areas Based on Airborne Laser Scanning Point Clouds

Sensors ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thi Tran ◽  
Camillo Ressl ◽  
Norbert Pfeifer
Author(s):  
Leena Matikainen ◽  
Juha Hyyppä ◽  
Paula Litkey

During the last 20 years, airborne laser scanning (ALS), often combined with multispectral information from aerial images, has shown its high feasibility for automated mapping processes. Recently, the first multispectral airborne laser scanners have been launched, and multispectral information is for the first time directly available for 3D ALS point clouds. This article discusses the potential of this new single-sensor technology in map updating, especially in automated object detection and change detection. For our study, Optech Titan multispectral ALS data over a suburban area in Finland were acquired. Results from a random forests analysis suggest that the multispectral intensity information is useful for land cover classification, also when considering ground surface objects and classes, such as roads. An out-of-bag estimate for classification error was about 3% for separating classes asphalt, gravel, rocky areas and low vegetation from each other. For buildings and trees, it was under 1%. According to feature importance analyses, multispectral features based on several channels were more useful that those based on one channel. Automatic change detection utilizing the new multispectral ALS data, an old digital surface model (DSM) and old building vectors was also demonstrated. Overall, our first analyses suggest that the new data are very promising for further increasing the automation level in mapping. The multispectral ALS technology is independent of external illumination conditions, and intensity images produced from the data do not include shadows. These are significant advantages when the development of automated classification and change detection procedures is considered.


Author(s):  
Leena Matikainen ◽  
Juha Hyyppä ◽  
Paula Litkey

During the last 20 years, airborne laser scanning (ALS), often combined with multispectral information from aerial images, has shown its high feasibility for automated mapping processes. Recently, the first multispectral airborne laser scanners have been launched, and multispectral information is for the first time directly available for 3D ALS point clouds. This article discusses the potential of this new single-sensor technology in map updating, especially in automated object detection and change detection. For our study, Optech Titan multispectral ALS data over a suburban area in Finland were acquired. Results from a random forests analysis suggest that the multispectral intensity information is useful for land cover classification, also when considering ground surface objects and classes, such as roads. An out-of-bag estimate for classification error was about 3% for separating classes asphalt, gravel, rocky areas and low vegetation from each other. For buildings and trees, it was under 1%. According to feature importance analyses, multispectral features based on several channels were more useful that those based on one channel. Automatic change detection utilizing the new multispectral ALS data, an old digital surface model (DSM) and old building vectors was also demonstrated. Overall, our first analyses suggest that the new data are very promising for further increasing the automation level in mapping. The multispectral ALS technology is independent of external illumination conditions, and intensity images produced from the data do not include shadows. These are significant advantages when the development of automated classification and change detection procedures is considered.


Author(s):  
G. Gabara ◽  
P. Sawicki

Abstract. The term “3D building models” is used in relation to the CityGML models and building information modelling. Reconstruction and modelling of 3D building objects in urban areas becomes a common trend and finds a wide spectrum of utilitarian applications. The paper presents the quality assessment of two multifaceted 3D building models, which were obtained from two open-access databases: Polish national Geoportal (accuracy in LOD 2 standard) and Trimble SketchUp Warehouse (accuracy in LOD 2 standard with information about architectural details of façades). The Geoportal 3D models were primary created based on the airborne laser scanning data (density 12 pts/sq. m, elevation accuracy to 0.10 m) collected during Informatic System for Country Protection against extraordinary hazards project. The testing was performed using different validation low-altitude photogrammetric datasets: RIEGL LMS-Q680i airborne laser scanning point cloud (min. density 25 pts/sq. m and height accuracy 0.03 m), and image-based Phase One iXU-RS 1000 point cloud (average accuracy in the horizontal and in the vertical plane is respectively to 0.015 m and 0.030 m). The visual comparison, heat maps with the function of the signed distance, and histograms in predefined ranges were used to evaluate the quality and accuracy of 3D building models. The aspect of error sources that occurred during the modelling process was also discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Florian Politz ◽  
Monika Sester ◽  
Claus Brenner

Abstract. Detecting changes is an important task to update databases and find irregularities in spatial data. Every couple of years, national mapping agencies (NMAs) acquire nation-wide point cloud data from Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) as well as from Dense Image Matching (DIM) using aerial images. Besides deriving several other products such as Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) from them, those point clouds also offer the chance to detect changes between two points in time on a large scale. Buildings are an important object class in the context of change detection to update cadastre data. As detecting changes manually is very time consuming, the aim of this study is to provide reliable change detections for different building sizes in order to support NMAs in their task to update their databases. As datasets of different times may have varying point densities due to technological advancements or different sensors, we propose a raster-based approach, which is independent of the point density altogether. Within a raster cell, our approach considers the height distribution of all points for two points in time by exploiting the Jensen-Shannon distance to measure their similarity. Our proposed method outperforms simple threshold methods on detecting building changes with respect to the same or different point cloud types. In combination with our proposed class change detection approach, we achieve a change detection performance measured by the mean F1-Score of about 71% between two ALS and about 60% between ALS and DIM point clouds acquired at different times.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (20) ◽  
pp. 2417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhenchao Zhang ◽  
George Vosselman ◽  
Markus Gerke ◽  
Claudio Persello ◽  
Devis Tuia ◽  
...  

Detecting topographic changes in an urban environment and keeping city-level point clouds up-to-date are important tasks for urban planning and monitoring. In practice, remote sensing data are often available only in different modalities for two epochs. Change detection between airborne laser scanning data and photogrammetric data is challenging due to the multi-modality of the input data and dense matching errors. This paper proposes a method to detect building changes between multimodal acquisitions. The multimodal inputs are converted and fed into a light-weighted pseudo-Siamese convolutional neural network (PSI-CNN) for change detection. Different network configurations and fusion strategies are compared. Our experiments on a large urban data set demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Our change map achieves a recall rate of 86.17%, a precision rate of 68.16%, and an F1-score of 76.13%. The comparison between Siamese architecture and feed-forward architecture brings many interesting findings and suggestions to the design of networks for multimodal data processing.


Author(s):  
Z. Zhang ◽  
G. Vosselman ◽  
M. Gerke ◽  
C. Persello ◽  
D. Tuia ◽  
...  

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Airborne photogrammetry and airborne laser scanning are two commonly used technologies used for topographical data acquisition at the city level. Change detection between airborne laser scanning data and photogrammetric data is challenging since the two point clouds show different characteristics. After comparing the two types of point clouds, this paper proposes a feed-forward Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to detect building changes between them. The motivation from an application point of view is that the multimodal point clouds might be available for different epochs. Our method contains three steps: First, the point clouds and orthoimages are converted to raster images. Second, square patches are cropped from raster images and then fed into CNN for change detection. Finally, the original change map is post-processed with a simple connected component analysis. Experimental results show that the patch-based recall rate reaches 0.8146 and the precision rate reaches 0.7632. Object-based evaluation shows that 74 out of 86 building changes are correctly detected.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 2938
Author(s):  
Feng Li ◽  
Haihong Zhu ◽  
Zhenwei Luo ◽  
Hang Shen ◽  
Lin Li

Separating point clouds into ground and nonground points is an essential step in the processing of airborne laser scanning (ALS) data for various applications. Interpolation-based filtering algorithms have been commonly used for filtering ALS point cloud data. However, most conventional interpolation-based algorithms have exhibited a drawback in terms of retaining abrupt terrain characteristics, resulting in poor algorithmic precision in these regions. To overcome this drawback, this paper proposes an improved adaptive surface interpolation filter with a multilevel hierarchy by using a cloth simulation and relief amplitude. This method uses three hierarchy levels of provisional digital elevation model (DEM) raster surfaces with thin plate spline (TPS) interpolation to separate ground points from unclassified points based on adaptive residual thresholds. A cloth simulation algorithm is adopted to generate sufficient effective initial ground seeds for constructing topographic surfaces with high quality. Residual thresholds are adaptively constructed by the relief amplitude of the examined area to capture complex landscape characteristics during the classification process. Fifteen samples from the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ISPRS) commission are used to assess the performance of the proposed algorithm. The experimental results indicate that the proposed method can produce satisfying results in both flat areas and steep areas. In a comparison with other approaches, this method demonstrates its superior performance in terms of filtering results with the lowest omission error rate; in particular, the proposed approach retains discontinuous terrain features with steep slopes and terraces.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 261
Author(s):  
Francisco Mauro ◽  
Andrew T. Hudak ◽  
Patrick A. Fekety ◽  
Bryce Frank ◽  
Hailemariam Temesgen ◽  
...  

Airborne laser scanning (ALS) acquisitions provide piecemeal coverage across the western US, as collections are organized by local managers of individual project areas. In this study, we analyze different factors that can contribute to developing a regional strategy to use information from completed ALS data acquisitions and develop maps of multiple forest attributes in new ALS project areas in a rapid manner. This study is located in Oregon, USA, and analyzes six forest structural attributes for differences between: (1) synthetic (i.e., not-calibrated), and calibrated predictions, (2) parametric linear and semiparametric models, and (3) models developed with predictors computed for point clouds enclosed in the areas where field measurements were taken, i.e., “point-cloud predictors”, and models developed using predictors extracted from pre-rasterized layers, i.e., “rasterized predictors”. Forest structural attributes under consideration are aboveground biomass, downed woody biomass, canopy bulk density, canopy height, canopy base height, and canopy fuel load. Results from our study indicate that semiparametric models perform better than parametric models if no calibration is performed. However, the effect of the calibration is substantial in reducing the bias of parametric models but minimal for the semiparametric models and, once calibrations are performed, differences between parametric and semiparametric models become negligible for all responses. In addition, minimal differences between models using point-cloud predictors and models using rasterized predictors were found. We conclude that the approach that applies semiparametric models and rasterized predictors, which represents the easiest workflow and leads to the most rapid results, is justified with little loss in accuracy or precision even if no calibration is performed.


Author(s):  
Yuzhou Zhou ◽  
Ronggang Huang ◽  
Tengping Jiang ◽  
Zhen Dong ◽  
Bisheng Yang

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