Abstract
Abstract. This article summarises our first results and experiences on the use of multispectral airborne laser scanner (ALS) data. Optech Titan multispectral ALS data over a large suburban area in Finland were acquired on three different dates in 2015–2016. We investigated the feasibility of the data from the first date for land cover classification and road mapping. Object-based analyses with segmentation and random forests classification were used. The potential of the data for change detection of buildings and roads was also demonstrated. The overall accuracy of land cover classification results with six classes was 96 % compared with validation points. The data also showed high potential for road detection, road surface classification and change detection. The multispectral intensity information appeared to be very important for automated classifications. Compared to passive aerial images, the intensity images have interesting advantages, such as the lack of shadows. Currently, we focus on analyses and applications with the multitemporal multispectral data. Important questions include, for example, the potential and challenges of the multitemporal data for change detection.
Highlights
Multispectral airborne laser scanning (ALS) has recently become available and provides active multispectral information for 3D ALS point clouds from a single sensor
The first studies based on Optech Titan data show the high potential of the data for applications such as land cover classification (e.g., Wichmann et al, 2015; Bakuła et al, 2016; Fernandez-Diaz et al, 2016; Matikainen et al, 2017; Morsy et al, 2017; Teo and Wu, 2017), road mapping (Karila et al, 2017), and map updating (Matikainen et al, 2017)
Our analyses suggest that the new multispectral ALS data have high potential for further increasing the automation level in mapping
Summary
Multispectral airborne laser scanning (ALS) has recently become available and provides active multispectral information for 3D ALS point clouds from a single sensor. This technique is an interesting alternative to those commonly used in mapping, i.e., single-channel ALS and passive multispectral aerial imaging. The first operational multispectral ALS system was launched by Teledyne Optech (Ontario, Canada) in late 2014 with the product name Titan. The first studies based on Optech Titan data show the high potential of the data for applications such as land cover classification (e.g., Wichmann et al, 2015; Bakuła et al, 2016; Fernandez-Diaz et al, 2016; Matikainen et al, 2017; Morsy et al, 2017; Teo and Wu, 2017), road mapping (Karila et al, 2017), and map updating (Matikainen et al, 2017)
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