Experimental comparison of filter algorithms for bare-Earth extraction from airborne laser scanning point clouds

Over the past years, several filters have been developed to extract bare-Earth points from point clouds. ISPRS Working Group III/3 conducted a test to determine the performance of these filters and the influence of point density thereon, and to identify directions for future research. Twelve selected datasets have been processed by eight participants. In this paper, the test results are presented. The paper describes the characteristics of the provided datasets and the used filter approaches. The filter performance is analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively. All filters perform well in smooth rural landscapes, but all produce errors in complex urban areas and rough terrain with vegetation. In general, filters that estimate local surfaces are found to perform best. The influence of point density could not well be determined in this experiment. Future research should be directed towards the usage of additional data sources, segment-based classification, and self-diagnosis of filter algorithms.