MetropoGIS: A City Modeling System

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, we will report on a system that automatically generates a 3D block model from digital aerial images. In this part we will focus on the automatic aerial triangulation and a dense matching process. The second part addresses the augmentation of this 3D block model of a real city with geo-referenced terrestrial data of the facades. The terrestrial images are acquired by a hand-held digital consumer camera. The relative orientation of the photographs is calculated automatically and fitted towards the 3D block model with minimized human input using vanishing points. The extraction of 3D primitives on the facades is based on area based matching and line matching over multiple oriented images. Third, we report on high quality reconstructions of selected objects like historic and otherwise important building facades and statues. The proposed city modeling system delivers a fully 3D geographic information data set of a city in different levels of detail and is called MetropoGIS.