Comprehensive quality evaluation of airborne lidar data

Abstract

As a new data source of remote sensing, airborne LiDAR data quality evaluation is of great importance. This paper focused on the comprehensive quality evaluation of airborne LiDAR data in the following aspects: data integrity, data accuracy , data density, interpretation ability of intensity and the quality of spatial data products from LiDAR data, which aimed to provide a complete reference to airborne LiDAR data quality for practical applications. For data integrity, a data void extraction method based on region growing was proposed to check the completeness of spatial distribution. Data accuracy is a key quality index for LiDAR data quality. Height offset statistics among overlapping strips were calculated to evaluate the relative accuracy. Data density is an important factor influencing the products quality from LiDAR data. The average point spacing can only demonstrate the whole density of the data, whereas the local density is much more important for specific applications. In this paper, the density distribution map is used to reflect the density variations for the whole data. Besides, interpretation ability of intensity is also used to evaluate the quality of the airborne LiDAR data. Quality of DTM was used to evaluate the LiDAR data at last.