Integration of Aerial Thermal Imagery, LiDAR Data and Ground Surveys for Surface Temperature Mapping in Urban Environments

Abstract

A single-band surface temperature retrieval method is proposed, aiming at achieving a better accuracy by exploiting the integration of aerial thermal images with LiDAR data and ground surveys. LiDAR data allow the generation of a high resolution digital surface model and a detailed modeling of the Sky-View Factor (SVF). Ground surveys of surface temperature and emissivity, instead, are used to estimate the atmospheric parameters involved in the model (through a bounded least square adjustment) and for a first assessment of the accuracy of the results. The RMS of the difference between the surface temperatures computed from the model and measured on the check sites ranges between 0.8°C and 1.0°C, depending on the algorithm used to calculate the SVF. Results are in general better than the ones obtained without considering SVF and prove the effectiveness of the integration of different data sources. The proposed approach has the advantage of avoiding the modeling of the atmosphere conditions, which is often difficult to achieve with the desired accuracy; on the other hand, it is highly dependent on the accuracy of the data measured on the ground.

Experimental Calibration of Underground Heat Transfer Models Under a Winery Building in a Rural Area

“…The replacement of the natural soil and vegetation by artifi cial surfaces always increases the air and subsurface temperature around a building throughout the year and this is caused by: the indirect solar heating by urban structures, the building heat losses and the land use change (Bornstein, 1968;Ferguson and Woodbury, 2004;Mandanici et al, 2016). At a district or city level, this phenomenon is called the Urban Heat Island effect (Landsberg, 1981).…”

Super-Resolution of Thermal Images Using an Automatic Total Variation Based Method

“…It was part of the thermal aerial survey over the city of Bologna, held on 14 March 2016 in the framework of the ChoT (The challenge of remote sensing thermography as indicator of energy efficiency of buildings) project [32]. Only the most relevant characteristics of the survey are summarized here, and readers are referred to previous publications for further details [15,33]. The thermal camera used for the acquisition was a NEC TS9260, operating in the long wave infrared (7-16 microns) with a resolution of 480 × 640 pixels and a noise equivalent temperature difference of 0.06 °C.…”

Sparse Depth Enhanced Direct Thermal-Infrared SLAM Beyond the Visible Spectrum

“…In past decades, many studies on the 3D thermographic mapping have been introduced. Particularly in the remote sensing field, research has been conducted to integrate aerial thermal imagery and LiDAR data for ground survey and cities modeling [14], [15]. A thermographic mapping approach utilizing a terrestrial laser scanner has also been proposed instead of requiring expensive aerial equipment [16].…”