Automatic urban road extraction using airborne laser scanning/altimetry and high resolution satellite data

Abstract

Automatic road extraction from remotely sensed images has been an active research in urban area during last few decades. But such study becomes difficult in urban environment due to mix of natural and man-made features. This research explores methodology for semiautomatic extraction of urban roads. An integrated approach of airborne laser scanning (ALS) altimetry and high-resolution data has been used to extract road and differentiate them from flyovers. Object oriented fuzzy rule based approach classifies roads from high resolution satellite images. Complete road network is extracted with the combination of ALS and high-resolution data. The results show that an integration of LiDAR data and IKONOS data gives better accuracy for automatic road extraction. The method was applied on urban area of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.