Quality measures for building reconstruction from airborne laser scanner data

As 3D city models become more detailed and more accurate, it is of importance to correctly judge the quality of these models. The problem is that the quality of 3D buildings is composed of multiple indicators that cannot easily fit into a single value. Before analysing differences between reference data and 3D models, it is necessary to understand the realisation of the 3D models. The following study presents criteria to evaluate the quality of reconstructed building models, from a reconstruction point of view. This can be seen as a relative quality check, as no usage has been made of independent reference data. The advantages of the relative quality check are that the quality can be predicted for the complete dataset and that it provides information on which object parts are less accurately reconstructed than others. In this paper we describe several quality measures on buildings that have been reconstructed using airborne laser data. It is shown how the quality measures can be used to gain insight in the quality of the output, but also to improve processing steps along the way from laser data to 3D model. If future users have to indicate if the model is suitable for certain applications, it is advised to deliver these quality measures together with the reconstructed model.