Height and Facet Extraction from LiDAR Point Cloud for Automatic Creation of 3D Building Models.

Three-dimensional models of buildings have a variety of applications, e.g., in urban planning, for making decision where to locate power lines, solar panels, cellular antennas, etc. Often, 3D models are created from a LiDAR point cloud, however, this presents three challenges. First, to generate maps at a nationwide scale or even for a large city, it is essential to effectively store and process the data. Second, there is a need to produce a compact representation of the result, to avoid representing each building as thousands of points. Third, it is often required to seamlessly integrate computed models with non-geospatial features of the geospatial entities. In this paper, we demonstrate an end-to-end automation of a large-scale 3D-model creation for buildings. The tool compacts the point cloud and allows to effortlessly integrate the results with information stored in a database. The main motivation for our tool is 5G network planning, where antenna locations require careful consideration, given that buildings and trees could obstruct or reflect high-frequency cellular transmissions.