Geographic Object-Based Mosaicing (OBM) of High-Resolution Thermal Airborne Imagery (TABI-1800) to Improve the Interpretation of Urban Image Objects

As part of the Heat Energy Assessment Technologies (HEAT) project, we describe a novel geographic object-based mosaicing algorithm referred to as Object-Based Mosaicing (OBM) that joins thermal airborne flight lines around urban roof objects rather than bisecting them with arbitrary mosaic join lines. An OBM mosaic is compared with a “traditional” mosaic product (created in ENVI 4.8) consisting of 44 TABI-1800 flight lines of the City of Calgary, Alberta, Canada (825 km
²
). Compared with the traditional mosaic, OBM results in the following: 1) visually improved roof shapes within the scene; 2) reduced processing time (up to 50 %); 3) more accurate hot-spot detection; and 4) a better data set for more accurate home energy models-as the thermal imagery for each roof are from a single acquisition time. Conversely, without applying OBM to the full scene, 14 209 homes are bisected within the traditional mosaic product.