Use of topographic LiDAR point clouds for building reconstruction

Demand for three-dimensional (3D) urban models keeps growing in various civil and military applications. Topographic LiDAR systems are capable of acquiring elevation data directly over terrain features. However, the task of creating a large-scale virtual environment still remains a time-consuming and manual work. In this thesis a method for 3D building reconstruction, consisting of building roof detection, roof outline extraction and regularization, and 3D building model generation, directly from LiDAR point clouds is developed. In the proposed approach, a new algorithm called Gaussian Markov Random Field (GMRF) and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) is used to segment point clouds for building roof detection. The modified convex hull (MCH) algorithm is used for the extraction of roof outlines followed by the regularization of the extracted outlines using the modified hierarchical regularization algorithm. Finally, 3D building models are generated in an ArcGIS environment. The results obtained demonstrate the effectiveness and satisfactory accuracy of the developed method.