ISPRS-Annals ISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences ISPRS-Annals ISPRS Ann. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci. 2194-9050 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/isprs-annals-IV-2-129-2018 INVESTIGATION OF JOINT VISIBILITY BETWEEN SAR AND OPTICAL IMAGES OF URBAN ENVIRONMENTS Hughes L. H. 1 Auer S. 2 Schmitt M. 1 Signal Processing in Earth Observation, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Munich, Germany Remote Sensing Technology Institute (IMF), German Aerospace Center (DLR), Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany 28 05 2018 IV-2 129 136 Copyright: © 2018 L. H. Hughes et al. 2018 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This article is available from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/IV-2/129/2018/isprs-annals-IV-2-129-2018.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/IV-2/129/2018/isprs-annals-IV-2-129-2018.pdf

In this paper, we present a work-flow to investigate the joint visibility between very-high-resolution SAR and optical images of urban scenes. For this task, we extend the simulation framework SimGeoI to enable a simulation of individual pixels rather than complete images. Using the extended SimGeoI simulator, we carry out a case study using a TerraSAR-X staring spotlight image and a Worldview-2 panchromatic image acquired over the city of Munich, Germany. The results of this study indicate that about 55 % of the scene are visible in both images and are thus suitable for matching and data fusion endeavours, while about 25 % of the scene are affected by either radar shadow or optical occlusion. Taking the image acquisition parameters into account, our findings can provide support regarding the definition of upper bounds for image fusion tasks, as well as help to improve acquisition planning with respect to different application goals.