Drivable Space Extraction from Airborne LiDAR and Aerial Photos: Fid-Bau Portal

Drivable Space Extraction from Airborne LiDAR and Aerial Photos

Dow, Ryan / Zhang, Su / Bogus, Susan M. / Han, Fei

The majority of the currently available roadway network data is presented in the format of centerlines. This format has its unique advantages, but other important attributes of a roadway network such as width and area are commonly missing from roadway management agencies’ database. In recent years, airborne LiDAR and high-spatial resolution aerial photos are routinely collected by government agencies and provided to the public for free access. Coupled with advanced image processing techniques, these data hold the potential to permit the identification of transportation infrastructure assets with unprecedented accuracy and speed, and ultimately, the extraction of drivable space with higher accuracy than has traditionally been possible by ground survey. This research explored the utility of airborne LiDAR and high-spatial resolution aerial photos for extracting drivable space information from a complex urban area. Subsequently, roadway width information was derived from the extracted drivable space data. Research results revealed that the accuracy of extracting roadway network width information from airborne LiDAR data and high-spatial resolution aerial photos are acceptable for city planning purposes, but may not be used for engineering design purposes.