Semi-automated Map Object Extraction from 1m Resolution Space Images

Extraction of map objects such as roads, railroads, rivers and building boundaries from 1m resolution space images is one of the important research issue. Automation of this task is crucial for the success of the application but full and reliable automation is yet to be achieved. This paper describes the development of algorithms to extract two major map objects, roads and buildings. We adopt the “semi-automatic” approach for reliability and efficiency. For road extraction, we designed a new least squares template matching algorithm. For buildings, we combined line analysis and template matching for semi-automatic extraction. Our algorithms were tested with IKONOS images over a very dense urban scene. The algorithms developed showed promising results. The major contribution of this paper is the development of monoscopic algorithms little human intervention that produces a fair amount of information. * Corresponding Author