DIGITAL SURFACE MODEL (DSM) DATASETS FOR BUILT STRUCTURE HEIGHT ESTIMATION OVER INDIAN CITIES

摘要

Previous researches have indicated correlation of growth in built-up urban area and air pollution for Indian cities. Characterization of urban regions into residential, commercial and industrial zones can throw light on nature of air quality growth in these zones. For this, we investigate the possibility of using freely available coarse resolution satellite derived digital surface model (DSM) to estimate building height. Since nightlight observed from space are reliable indicator of ground human activity, it is hypothesized that using structure height in conjunction with nightlight can reveal characterization of urban areas. The most recent DSMs at global scale are those provided by ASTER and ALOS World 3D (AW3D) datasets. Both of them are distributed freely at 30m resolution. We consider two urban regions in India for comparing the performance of DSM to derive built structure heights. Our results indicate better performance of AW3D datasets to find built structure heights. Further, nightlight shows a weak relation for one of the locations under study.