3D City Mapping

Three-dimensional models of urban environments are useful in a variety of applications. They are typically represented either as Digital Surface Models (DSM) or triangular 3D meshes. A standard technique for obtaining the geometry of a large-scale city area in an automated or semi-automated way is to apply stereo vision techniques on aerial or satellite imagery. DSMs and 3D models can also be obtained from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) or from airborne laser scans Recently, ground-based data acquisition systems have been developed, which are capable of scanning the geometry of building facades as seen from the street level..