Multi-Source Vertical Obstruction Generation

Cultural development often results in features that obstruct visual and RF view sheds and can constitute obstructions to flight paths for airports and operational missions. Tools are needed that provide for rapid assessment of vertical obstructions for operations worldwide. These tools should be capable of extracting data from diverse imagery sources and assimilating the extracted information together with existing geospatial databases to create new vertical obstruction databases. The proposed research will build on prior research into the automated extraction of digital elevation models and three-dimensional cultural feature extraction. This prior research was conducted to support precision-guided munitions mission planning and precision terrain aided navigation (PTAN) and utilized a broad range of imagery sources including digital point position database (DPPDB). New research will also explore the use of multi-spectral to assist in the feature extraction task. Research will be conducted into fusing multiple data geospatial database sources to create the vertical obstruction database. The goal is to create a tool that can ingest imagery and data in industry standard geospatial database formats, automatically extract vertical obstruction data based on operator input parameters, and export this data into formats that can be used by industry standard geospatial database tools.