LiDAR-Based System and Optical VHR Data for Building Detection and Mapping.

Silvia Liberata Ullo,Giuseppe Meoli,Chiara Zarro,Mariano Focareta,Konrad Wojtowicz

doi:10.3390/s20051285

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to highlight how the employment of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technique can enhance greatly the performance and reliability of many monitoring systems applied to the Earth Observation (EO) and Environmental Monitoring. A short presentation of LiDAR systems, underlying their peculiarities, is first given. References to some review papers are highlighted, as they can be regarded as useful guidelines for researchers interested in using LiDARs. Two case studies are then presented and discussed, based on the use of 2D and 3D LiDAR data. Some considerations are done on the performance achieved through the use of LiDAR data combined with data from other sources. The case studies show how the LiDAR-based systems, combined with optical Very High Resolution (VHR) data, succeed in improving the analysis and monitoring of specific areas of interest, specifically how LiDAR data help in exploring external environment and extracting building features from urban areas. Moreover the discussed Case Studies demonstrate that the use of the LiDAR data, even with a low density of points, allows the development of an automatic procedure for accurate building features extraction, through object-oriented classification techniques, therefore by underlying the importance that even simple LiDAR-based systems play in EO and Environmental Monitoring.

Highlights

An efficient exploration of the surrounding environment is becoming the key point for the future world where human functionalities are going to be substituted by automatic or semiautomatic systems.Self-driving cars and charging robots for electrical cars are just some examples where the knowledge of the space in which to move becomes essential for the success of complex operations
As already underlined in the introduction, we aimed to show how the Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)-based systems succeed in improving the analysis and monitoring of specific areas of interest, how LiDAR data help in exploring external environment and extracting building features from urban areas
LiDAR-based systems play in Earth Observation (EO) and Environmental Monitoring, whereas in the second case study, the use of a new 3D LiDAR device is discussed and tested through a measurement campaign carried out at the premises of Military University of Technology (MUT) in Warsaw, Poland

Summary

Introduction

Self-driving cars and charging robots for electrical cars are just some examples where the knowledge of the space in which to move becomes essential for the success of complex operations. In this context, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR)-based systems are going to play an increasingly more important role because of their higher capability to discriminate smaller objects with respect to other active systems, such as RAdio Detection And Ranging (RADAR) systems. LiDAR measures reflected light emitted by a laser, which has a much smaller wavelength than radio signals, and its capability to discriminate smaller objects is much higher, and its capability to solve the navigation problems. It has found an increasing use in combination with other data sources for land surface cover analysis and classification [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion