Retrieval of building heights from ICESat-2 photon data and evaluation with field measurements

Abstract

Abstract Building heights play a vital role in the field of urban morphology and allied applications. Recently there is a push to retrieve building heights from the space borne sensors. NASA’s ice, cloud, and land elevation satellite-2 (ICESat-2) carries a laser altimeter on-board that produces geolocated photon events on various types of surfaces such as glaciers, oceans, land and canopy on Earth. In this article, heights of the sampled buildings in an urban area were estimated using ICESat-2 photon data. The elevation from the geolocated photons reflected from the surface (bare Earth) of adjacent sides of a building under investigation was considered as local datum; similarly, the elevation of the building is computed from the geolocated photons reflected from the building roof. These two elevation estimates were used to compute the height of the building. These heights were evaluated using the field measurements. The estimated building heights from the profiles of ICESat-2 data agree with the field measurements with an accuracy ranging from 8 to 17 cm and suggest the utility of using ICESat-2 data for urban studies, if accuracy tolerance is in the centimeter level, is acceptable.