Part II Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Applications for Sustainable Development Experiments on Generation of 3D Virtual Geographic Environment Based on Laser Scanning Technique

Airborne laser scanner is an integrated system of GPS, INS and laser scanner. It has become an accurate, fast, and versatile measurement technique that can complement or partly replace other existing acquisition technologies and has been used in more diverse applications that concern large-scale and precise topographic Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) and Digital Surface Models (DSMs). Up to now, development of algorithm and methods for acquiring 3D spatial data, interpretation and modeling of this kind data for property application are main research topics. This paper demonstrates an experiment on generation of 3D virtual geographic environment by using experimental flight laser scanning data, based on a set of algorithms and methods that were developed for automatically interpret range images for extracting geo-spatial features to reconstruct geo-objects. The set of algorithms and methods for interpretation and modeling of laser scanner data include the followings: Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) based range image interpolation; Mathematical Morphology (MM) based range image filtering, feature extraction and range image segmentation, feature generalization and optimization; 3D objects reconstruction and modeling; Computer Graphics (CG) based visualization and animation of geographic virtual reality environment. The results of the experiment of this research demonstrate the operational utilization of the suggested approach and its applicability to various fields of study, such as urban disaster management.