International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences, Volume XXXIX-B7, 2012
XXII ISPRS Congress, 25 August — 01 September 2012, Melbourne, Australia
UPDATING BUILDING MAPS BASED ON
OBJECT EXTRACTION AND BUILDING HEIGHT ESTIMATION
L. Zhu® *, H. Shimamura? K. Tachibana*
a Research and Development Center, PASCO CORPORATION, Annex 2-8-11 Higashiyama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-
0043, Japan - (luihnz7801, hairdu9189, kainka9209)@pasco.co.jp
Commission VII, WG VII/5
KEY WORDS: Aerial, Building, Updating, Change Detection, Object
ABSTRACT:
This study presents a novel approach in building change detection for map updating in urban areas. Our approach is based on the
integration of building object extraction and building height estimation utilizing existing 2D building maps and newly-acquired high
resolution aerial orthoimages & DSMs. In our proposed scheme, the detection of newly-built buildings is carried out based on
building object extraction from orthoimages and DSMs. Detection of demolished and reconstructed buildings is performed based on
estimating the height of each building using existing building maps and newly-acquired DSMs. Finally the two results are integrated
together for map updating. The experimental results showed that the proposed technique performed satisfactorily well in detecting
newly-built buildings, demolished buildings and reconstructed buildings, and was very effective in reducing the problem of
misdetection and false detection. This technique is already integrated into a practical system for building maps updating.
1. INTRODUCTION
Automated update of building information in maps from high-
resolution aerial imagery is one of the most important and
challenging researches in the field of photogrammetry and
remote sensing. Up-to-date building information is necessary
for many practical applications such as fixed assets inventory,
city planning, GIS application analysis, etc. In general,
updating of building information is carried out through change
detection utilizing orthoimages or both orthoimages and DSMs
acquired at two different epochs. However, the orthoimages and
DSMs of the previous epoch do not necessarily always exist. In
many cases, only 2D building vector maps are available for
comparison. Existing approaches for automated update of
building information, for instance, feature-based approach or
object-based approach, seem to be less accurate and less
realizable especially in dense urban areas due to the complexity
of urban environments, and quite a lot of challenges remain for
practical applications as well. Hence, there is a great demand
for development of corresponding new strategies on automated
update of 2D or 3D building maps.
This study presents a novel approach in building change
detection for map updating in urban areas. Our approach is
based on the integration of building object extraction and
building height estimation utilizing existing 2D building maps
and newly-acquired aerial orthoimages & DSMs. In the
proposed scheme, the detection of newly-built buildings is
carried out based on building object extraction from newly-
acquired orthoimages and DSMs. Detection of demolished and
reconstructed buildings is performed based on estimating the
height of each building using existing building maps and newly-
acquired DSMs. Finally the two results are integrated together
for map updating.
* Corresponding author.
The experimental results showed that the proposed approach
performed satisfactorily well in detecting newly-built buildings,
demolished buildings and reconstructed buildings in the test
area. Almost all demolished and reconstructed buildings are
detected. Most of the newly-built buildings are detected except
for some small ones due to the influence of vegetation
surrounding the buildings. This implies the necessity for further
improvement of building object extraction. Also, it is shown
that the proposed approach is very effective in reducing the
problem of misdetection and false detection especially for
demolished and reconstructed buildings. Moreover, it is found
that the proposed approach can be used to detect the
misregistration of building polygons in building maps in which
the positional accuracy of building polygons is worse and can
be used for accuracy check of building maps. This technique
has already been integrated into a practical change detection
system for building maps updating in Japan (Zhu et al., 2010).
2. METHODOLOGY OF BUILDING MAP UPDATING
In this study, a hybrid approach is proposed to detect newly-
built buildings, demolished and reconstructed buildings
respectively by exploiting the information from different kinds
of data. Since no orthoimages & DSMs data of the previous
epoch is provided for comparison with newly-acquired data,
newly-built buildings can not be extracted by using a general
change detection method. An alterative way is to extract all
building objects from newly-acquired orthoimages & DSMs
first, and then, to separate newly-built buildings out from other
ones by using an existing building map, i.e. only the building
objects at the locations where there were no previous building
polygons existed are retained. In contrary to detection of newly-
built buildings, detection of demolished and reconstructed
