Extraction of urban building heights from LiDAR data: an integrated remote sensing and GIS approach

Although passive remote sensing technology allows us to detect and map urban buildings and infrastructures, they have several limitations when it comes to extracting their heights. However, by using a combination of data from passive and active sensors, it is possible to overcome some of those limitations and produce highly accurate 3-D height maps of urban areas. In this paper, a combination of IKONOS and LiDAR data is used and processed through integrated remote sensing-GIS based method to extract individual building heights in the urban central part of Norman, Oklahoma. Results show that while the method extracts the location of buildings with moderately high (75%) degree of completeness, the accuracy level in estimating the area and height was lower and depends mostly on the presence of trees surrounding the buildings. Future research should focus on using the method on IKONOS and LiDAR data collected during winter seasons when the leaves of trees are not present.