Fusion of AIrborne and Terrestrial Image-Based 3d Modelling for Road Infrastructure Management – Vision and First Experiments

In this paper we present the vision and proof of concept of a seamless image-based 3d modelling approach fusing airborne and mobile terrestrial imagery. The proposed fusion relies on dense stereo matching for extracting 3d point clouds which – in combination with the original airborne and terrestrial stereo imagery – create a rich 3d geoinformation and 3d measuring space. For the seamless exploitation of this space we propose using a new virtual globe technology integrating the airborne and terrestrial stereoscopic imagery with the derived 3d point clouds. The concept is applied to road and road infrastructure management and evaluated in a highway mapping project combining stereovision based mobile mapping with high-resolution multispectral airborne road corridor mapping using the new Leica RCD30 sensor.