Detection of building changes from aerial images and light detection and ranging (LIDAR) data

Building models are built to provide three-dimensional (3-D) spatial information, which is needed in a variety of applications including city planning, construction management, location-based services of urban infrastructures, and the like. However, 3-D building models have to be updated on a timely manner to meet the changing demand. Rather than reconstructing building models for the entire area, it would be more convenient and effective to only update parts of the areas where there were changes. This paper aims at developing a new method, namely double-threshold strategy, to find such changes within 3-D building models in the region of interest with the aid of light detection and ranging (LIDAR) data. The proposed modeling scheme comprises three steps, namely, data pre-processing, change detection in building areas, and validation. In the first step for data pre-processing, data registration was carried out based on multi-source data. The second step for data preprocessing requires using the triangulation of an irregular network of data points collected by Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR), focusing on those locations containing walls or other above-ground objects that were ever removed. Then, change detection in the building models can be made possible for finding differences in height by comparing the LIDAR point measurements and the estimates of the building models. The results may be further refined using spectral and feature information collected from aerial imagery. A double-threshold strategy was applied to cope with the highly sensitive thresholding often encountered when using the rule-based approach. Finally, ground truth data were used for model validation. Research findings clearly indicate that the double-threshold strategy improves the overall accuracy from 93.1% to 95.9%.