3D BUILDING RECONSTRUCTION FROM LIDAR POINT CLOUDS BY ADAPTIVE DUAL CONTOURING

Abstract. This paper presents a novel workflow for data-driven building reconstruction from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) point clouds. The method comprises building extraction, a detailed roof segmentation using region growing with adaptive thresholds, segment boundary creation, and a structural 3D building reconstruction approach using adaptive 2.5D Dual Contouring. First, a 2D-grid is overlain on the segmented point cloud. Second, in each grid cell 3D vertices of the building model are estimated from the corresponding LiDAR points. Then, the number of 3D vertices is reduced in a quad-tree collapsing procedure, and the remaining vertices are connected according to their adjacency in the grid. Roof segments are represented by a Triangular Irregular Network (TIN) and are connected to each other by common vertices or - at height discrepancies - by vertical walls. Resulting 3D building models show a very high accuracy and level of detail, including roof superstructures such as dormers. The workflow is tested and evaluated for two data sets, using the evaluation method and test data of the “ISPRS Test Project on Urban Classification and 3D Building Reconstruction” (Rottensteiner et al., 2012). Results show that the proposed method is comparable with the state of the art approaches, and outperforms them regarding undersegmentation and completeness of the scene reconstruction.