Multi-Source Fusion of Roof Skeletons, LiDAR and Street-View Imagery for Semi-Automated LoD-2 Building Modelling

Research output: Contribution to journal › Conference article › Contributed › peer-review

Contributors

  • Vaibhav Rajan - , Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Author)
  • Sander Münster - , Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Author)
  • Jonas Bruschke - , Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Author)
  • Ferdinand Maiwald - , Chair of Optical 3D-Metrology (Author)

Abstract

LoD-2 building models are more informative and practically more useful than LoD-1 representations because they capture the roof structure that defines the essential three-dimensional form of a building. They are important for applications such as urban planning, environmental simulation, and digital heritage. Although recent roof shape extraction methods can derive vectorised 2D roof structures from very-high-resolution imagery, transforming these image-based representations into fully textured 3D buildings remains challenging. In this paper, we present a semi-automated LoD-2 reconstruction pipeline that integrates HEAT-derived roof geometry with airborne LiDAR, satellite and Google Street View imagery. The 2D outputs are reprojected into map coordinates, fused with LiDAR through a two-stage roof reconstruction strategy to derive roof shapes and combined with an adaptive, LiDAR-based ground base initialisation to create a complete 3D wireframe. Roofs are textured using VHR orthophotos while the walls are textured via a process of Street View panorama selection, geometric filtering, Mask2Former segmentation, and homography rectification. Across a large-scale evaluation on 1000 buildings, the proposed two-stage reconstruction strategy improves geometric agreement with the LiDAR reference data achieving a roof-surface RMSE of 0.445 m. The wall texturing process produces convincing facades when suitable panoramas are available. While minor challenges such as sensitivities to LiDAR outliers, incomplete roof geometry, and facade occlusions persist, this pipeline effectively bridges 2D roof parsing and textured LoD-2 model generation, providing a robust and scalable foundation for advancing toward fully automated workflows.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)127-135
Number of pages9
JournalISPRS Annals of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences
Volume11
Issue number2-2026
Publication statusPublished - 3 Jul 2026
Peer-reviewedYes

Conference

Title25th Congress of the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
SubtitleFrom Imagery to Understanding
Abbreviated titleISPRS Congress Toronto 2026
Conference number25
Duration4 - 11 July 2026
Website
LocationMetro Toronto Convention Centre (MTCC)
CityToronto
CountryCanada

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-2456-9731/work/222762610

Keywords

Keywords

  • Building Segmentation, LiDAR, LOD-2 Models, Roof Shape Detection, Textured 3D Models