Automatic 3D Building Model Generation from Airborne LiDAR Data and OpenStreetMap Using Procedural Modeling

This research is primarily focused on utilizing available airborne LiDAR data and spatial data from the OpenStreetMap (OSM) database to generate 3D models of buildings for a large-scale urban area. The city center of Ljubljana, Slovenia, was selected for the study area due to data availability and diversity of building shapes, heights, and functions, which presented a challenge for the automated generation of 3D models. To extract building heights, a range of data sources were utilized, including OSM attribute data, as well as georeferenced and classified point clouds and a digital elevation model (DEM) obtained from openly available LiDAR survey data of the Slovenian Environment Agency. A digital surface model (DSM) and digital terrain model (DTM) were derived from the processed LiDAR data. Building outlines and attributes were extracted from OSM and processed using QGIS. Spatial coverage of OSM data for buildings in the study area is excellent, whereas only 18% have attributes describing external appearance of the building and 6% describing roof type. LASTools software (rapidlasso GmbH, Friedrichshafener Straße 1, 82205 Gilching, GERMANY) was used to derive and assign building heights from 3D coordinates of the segmented point clouds. Various software options for procedural modeling were compared and Blender was selected due to the ability to process OSM data, availability of documentation, and low computing requirements. Using procedural modeling, a 3D model with level of detail (LOD) 1 was created fully automated. After analyzing roof types, a 3D model with LOD2 was created fully automated for 87.64% of buildings. For the remaining buildings, a comparison of procedural roof modeling and manual roof editing was performed. Finally, a visual comparison between the resulting 3D model and Google Earth’s model was performed. The main objective of this study is to demonstrate the efficient modeling process using open data and free software and resulting in an enhanced accuracy of the 3D building models compared to previous LOD2 iterations.