A new algorithm of building boundary extraction based on LIDAR data

LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is one of the most effective remote sensing systems, which could provide three dimensional information of earth surface with high accuracy and speed. Now the building boundary extraction is the key approach for 3D modeling of building and city mapping. In this paper, a new algorithm named Alpha Shapes is developed to extract the building boundary. Compared with other algorithms, Alpha Shapes algorithm works effectively in inner and outer boundaries extraction from point clouds data with convex and concave polygon shape. Moreover, it can keep fine features of buildings adaptively and filter the footprints of non-building. The experiments prove that the Alpha Shapes algorithm is very suitable and effective for the building boundary extraction based on LIDAR data.