Calculating OpenStreetMap Building Heights from Single User-Generated Photographs

3D city models are valuable and useful information for many experts for a wide range of environmental applications, where building models are a major geospatial element. To produce detailed and accurate 3D building models, conventional authoritative production processes are used, mostly relying on aerial photogrammetry and laser scanners. Since these are not available in the open source domain, the majority of the geographic user-generated data, such as OpenStreetMap, are mostly limited to two-dimensional maps, where the 3
^rd
(height) dimension is missing. To this end, we have developed a method that uses a single photograph taken from smartphones and OSM vector data to accurately calculate the photographed building height. When compared to reference precise field measurements, our implementation produced accurate building height values. This research presents a framework for the calculation of buildings height from user-generated photographs, which can be used for the creation of LoD1 building and city models.