Accuracy assessment of mobile mapping point clouds using the existing environment as terrestrial reference

Abstract

Mobile mapping data is widely used in various applications, what makes it especially important for data users to get a statistically verified quality statement on the geometric accuracy of the acquired point clouds or its processed products. The accuracy of point clouds can be divided into an absolute and a relative quality, where the absolute quality describes the position of the point cloud in a world coordinate system such as WGS84 or UTM, whereas the relative accuracy describes the accuracy within the point cloud itself. Furthermore, the quality of processed products such as segmented features depends on the global accuracy of the point cloud but mainly on the quality of the processing steps. Several data sources with different characteristics and quality can be thought of as potential reference data, such as cadastral maps, orthophoto, artificial control objects or terrestrial surveys using a total station. In this work a test field in a selected residential area was acquired as reference data in a terrestrial survey using a total station. In order to reach high accuracy the stationing of the total station was based on a newly made geodetic network with a local accuracy of less than 3 mm. The global position of the network was determined using a long time GNSS survey reaching an accuracy of 8 mm. Based on this geodetic network a 3D test field with facades and street profiles was measured with a total station, each point with a two-dimensional position and altitude. In addition, the surface of poles of street lights, traffic signs and trees was acquired using the scanning mode of the total station. Comparing this reference data to the acquired mobile mapping point clouds of several measurement campaigns a detailed quality statement on the accuracy of the point cloud data is made. Additionally, the advantages and disadvantages of the described reference data source concerning availability, cost, accuracy and applicability are discussed.