Classification of Ground Objects Using Laser Radar Data

Sammanfattning: Accurate 3D models of natural environments are important for many modelling and simulation applications, for both civilian and military purposes. When building 3D models from high resolution data acquired by an airborne laser scanner it is de-sirable to separate and classify the data to be able to process it further. For example, to build a polygon model of a building the samples belonging to the building must be found. In this thesis we have developed, implemented (in IDL and ENVI), and evaluated algorithms for classification of buildings, vegetation, power lines, posts, and roads. The data is gridded and interpolated and a ground surface is estimated before the classification. For the building classification an object based approach was used unlike most classification algorithms which are pixel based. The building classifica-tion has been tested and compared with two existing classification algorithms. The developed algorithm classified 99.6 % of the building pixels correctly, while the two other algorithms classified 92.2 % respective 80.5 % of the pixels correctly. The algorithms developed for the other classes were tested with thefollowing result (correctly classified pixels): vegetation, 98.8 %; power lines, 98.2 %; posts, 42.3 %; roads, 96.2 %.