Influence of ranging uncertainty of terrestrial laser scanning on change detection in topographic 3D point clouds

Terrestrial laser scanners are commonly used for remotely sensing natural surfaces into 3D point clouds. Time series of such 3D point clouds can be analysed to gain information of surface changes that are induced by Earth surface shaping processes. The atomic unit in time series analysis is a bitemp...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Winiwarter, Lukas (Author) , Anders, Katharina (Author) , Wujanz, Daniel (Author) , Höfle, Bernhard (Author)
Format: Chapter/Article Conference Paper
Language:English
Published: 03 Aug 2020
In: XXIV ISPRS Congress, Commission II
Year: 2020, Pages: 789-796
DOI:10.5194/isprs-annals-V-2-2020-789-2020
Online Access:Verlag, kostenfrei, Volltext: https://doi.org/10.5194/isprs-annals-V-2-2020-789-2020
Verlag, kostenfrei, Volltext: https://isprs-annals.copernicus.org/articles/V-2-2020/789/2020/
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Author Notes:Winiwarter, K. Anders, D. Wujanz, B. Höfle
Description
Summary:Terrestrial laser scanners are commonly used for remotely sensing natural surfaces into 3D point clouds. Time series of such 3D point clouds can be analysed to gain information of surface changes that are induced by Earth surface shaping processes. The atomic unit in time series analysis is a bitemporal change detection and quantification. This should involve an estimation of the minimum quantifiable change, the Level of Detection, to separate signal from noise, e.g. stemming from the measurement. To enable such an estimation through error propagation, a model of the sensing instrument’s measurement uncertainty is required. In this work, we present an investigation on the ranging component of terrestrial laser scanning on this uncertainty and its influence on 3D distances between point clouds of two epochs. Specifically, we analyse the effects of incidence angle, intensity and range for different object materials, and make additional considerations with respect to waveform information returned by the sensor. We estimate a model for the rangefinder uncertainty of a terrestrial laser scanner and apply it on experimental data. The results show that using a sensor-specific model of ranging uncertainty allows an appropriate estimation of the Level of Detection. At a range of 60 m and a rotational displacement of 10°, this Level of Detection ranges between 0.1 mm to 1 mm for a white and a grey surface and up to 5 mm for a black surface. The completeness of the detection of significant change ranges from 60.2 % (black) to 89.8 % (grey) for the proposed method and from 65.5 % to 88.9 % for the baseline, when compared to tachymeter measurements. The similarity between the results is expected and suggests the validity of error propagation for the derivation of the Level of Detection.
Item Description:Gesehen am 17.06.2024
Physical Description:Online Resource
DOI:10.5194/isprs-annals-V-2-2020-789-2020