Automatic building extraction from laser scanning data: an input tool for disaster management Original Research Article

Estimation of damages caused by a disaster is a major task in the post disaster mitigation process. To enhance the relief and rescue operation in the affected area it is required to get a near real time damage model. For this purpose a fast method of data acquisition with suitable methods for extracting the man-made objects is required. Laser scanning data provide the height of the ground objects, which can be used for developing models to extract the man-made features in a complex urban environment. Using the height variation along the periphery of objects present in the data, a method based on standard deviation was developed to distinguish between tree and building.