Towards the Reconstruction of Prismatic Building Models by SAR-Optical Stereogrammetry

A huge archive of very high-resolution SAR and optical satellite imagery acquired by different remote sensing satellites provides the opportunity to explore the possibility of 3D-reconstruction by multi-sensor stereogrammetry. This paper investigates the potential of SAR-optical stereogrammetry over urban areas using very-high-resolution imagery acquired by TerraSAR-X and Worldview-2. Furthermore, the potentials and challenges of deriving simple prismatic building models by combining the stereogrammetry results and OpenStreetMap building footprints are discussed. The results of this data fusion research demonstrate the possibility of using SAR-optical stereogrammetry for urban 3D reconstruction at level-of-detail 1.