LIDAR AND VHRS DATA FOR ASSESSING LIVING QUALITY IN CITIES – AN APPROACH BASED ON 3D SPATIAL INDICES

Abstract. Modern spatial data acquisition technologies like airborne laser scanning and satellite images can be used to automatically map land cover classes. The layers representing spatial extent of various terrain objects are very valuable, especially when the 3D geometrical information stored in the ALS point clouds is taken into consideration. The paper describes a research aimed to develop a way to characterize the urban areas concerning the amount of vegetation and the relation between the vegetated areas and buildings. This relation can be used to characterize the living quality. Two proposed 3D spatial indices describe the relationship between the volume of the high vegetation and volume of buildings (VV2BV) or a relationship between the volume and area of vegetated and built-up areas (UVI). These indices can be calculated for a grid of user-defined cell size or for each building separately. In the second case, a user-defined buffer zone around each building is created to specify the calculation area. The fact that the indices are based on the 3D information, introduces a new method of mapping the urban green space and is suitable for characterizing the living conditions.