Building heights estimation using ZY3 data — A case study of Shanghai, China

The building heights and the heights' distribution of a city are important aspects of urban remote sensing researches. Building heights are estimation from the shadow on Chinese No.3 resource satellite image (ZY3) in Pudong area of Shanghai, China. The morphological building/shadow indexes (MBI and MSI) derived from remotely sensed data and object-based information extraction methods are used to classify the building and its shadow. Based on the formula derived from the relationship among the sun, the satellite and the building, building heights are calculated. The most of the calculated building heights are reliable. Absolute errors below 3m are about 67.5%, the average relative error is 3.7%, the errors below 5% are about 73.7%. The proposed method could well achieve the building extraction and building heights estimation in high-resolution images.