Multi-scale solution for building extraction from LiDAR and image data

This paper presents a multi-scale solution based on mathematical morphology for extracting the building features from remotely sensed elevation and spectral data. Elevation data are used as the primary data to delineate the structural information and are firstly represented on a morphological scale-space. The behaviors of elevation clusters across the scale-space are the cues for feature extraction. As a result, a complex structure can be extracted as a multi-part object in which each part is represented on a scale depending on its size. The building footprint is represented by the boundary of the largest part. Other object attributes include the area, height or number of stories. The spectral data is used as an additional source to remove vegetation and possibly classify the building roof material. Finally, the results can be stored in a multi-scale database introduced in this paper. The proposed solution is demonstrated using the data derived from a Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) surveying flight over Tokyo, Japan. The results show a reasonable match with reference data and prove the capability of the proposed approach in accommodation of diverse building shapes. Higher density LiDAR is expected to produce better accuracy in extraction, and more spectral sources are necessary for further classification of building roof material. It is also recommended that parallel processing should be implemented to reduce the computation time. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.