SEMI-AUTOMATIC EXTRACTION OF LINE AND AREA FEATURES FROM AERIAL AND SATELLITE IMAGES

The aim of the project, which was carried out by the two software companies ESG and Inpho as well as by the Chair for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing of the Technische Universität München and the Institut Cartogràfic de Catalunya (ICC) was to develop an operational software system for the semi-automatic extraction of line and area features in 2D and 3D from aerial images and high resolution satellite imagery. The complete system was delivered to the Geo-Information Office of the German Federal Armed Forces and has been in practical use since May 2003 for the update of VMap Level 1 vector data and the generation of the military basic vector database. The extraction tools for line and area features are integrated into Inpho's software platform inJECT, which was originally designed for the measurement of 3D building models in digital imagery. For the import and export of the GIS vector data an interface between inJECT and the GIS packages Dynamo and GeoMedia (Intergraph) has been developed based on the GML2 format standard. The semi-automatic extraction is preferably done in digital orthophotos for the capture of 2D GIS vector data. In addition, the software is available for the capture of 3D features using oriented aerial imagery. The algorithms and workflows have been extensively tested with IKONOS 2 and IRS satellite imagery as well as orthophotos with 50 cm pixel size.