Object-based Classification of Point Clouds

Today, the analysis of 3D point clouds acquired with topographic Lidar or photogrammetric systems has become an operational task for mapping and monitoring of infrastructure and environmental processes. Numerous applications require the identification and delineation of landscape objects and their properties. So far, many software solutions have been focused on the analysis of constructed and man-made objects, which are characterised by a regular and well- defined geometry (e.g. buildings, roads and other infrastructure). In comparison, the detection and analysis of natural landscape objects is challenging, since object boundaries might be fuzzy and the object characteristics within one class can be very diverse.