<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v3.0 20080202//EN" "https://jats.nlm.nih.gov/nlm-dtd/publishing/3.0/journalpublishing3.dtd">
<article xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" article-type="research-article" dtd-version="3.0" xml:lang="en">
<front>
<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>The International Archives of the Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing and Spatial Information Sciences</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">ISPRS-Archives</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">Int. Arch. Photogramm. Remote Sens. Spatial Inf. Sci.</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub">2194-9034</issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-3-W4-2025-3-2026</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>Creating 3D city models of Mexican cities based on open data</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Arroyo Ohori</surname>
<given-names>Ken</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9863-0152</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
<contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Stoter</surname>
<given-names>Jantien</given-names>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>3D Geoinformation, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>19</day>
<month>01</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>XLVIII-3/W4-2025</volume>
<fpage>3</fpage>
<lpage>9</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Ken Arroyo Ohori</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-3-W4-2025/3/2026/isprs-archives-XLVIII-3-W4-2025-3-2026.html">This article is available from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-3-W4-2025/3/2026/isprs-archives-XLVIII-3-W4-2025-3-2026.html</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-3-W4-2025/3/2026/isprs-archives-XLVIII-3-W4-2025-3-2026.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://isprs-archives.copernicus.org/articles/XLVIII-3-W4-2025/3/2026/isprs-archives-XLVIII-3-W4-2025-3-2026.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>This paper presents a novel methodology for the automated creation of 3D city models for Mexican cities using exclusively open data. In Mexico, while national topographic and elevation datasets exist, they lack crucial features like individual building footprints and road polygons, making it difficult to create 3D city models using the most common existing methodologies. The proposed method addresses these limitations by generating building footprints directly from high-resolution DSMs using a region-growing algorithm and deriving road polygons from the empty spaces between city blocks in the topographic data. These generated features, along with existing data for plant cover and water bodies, are then lifted to 3D using customisable rules. The methodology was implemented with Python and C++ scripts and tested in central Mexico City. Results show that the generated building footprints are often more accurate than those in global datasets (Microsoft, Google), particularly for non-rectilinear buildings, leading to recognisable city landmarks. However, the method has limitations, including missing approximately 30% of smaller buildings and occasionally misclassifying tall vegetation as buildings. Despite this, the work demonstrates the feasibility of creating useful 3D city models for the areas in Mexico with high-resolution elevation data.&amp;nbsp;</p>
</abstract>
<counts><page-count count="7"/></counts>
</article-meta>
</front>
<body/>
<back>
</back>
</article>