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Building models are built to provide three-dimensional (3-D) spatial information, which is needed in a variety of applications including city planning, construction management, location-based services of urban infrastructures, and the like. However, 3-D building models have to be updated on a timely manner to meet the changing demand. Rather than reconstructing building models for the entire area, it would be more convenient and effective to only update parts of the areas where there were changes. This paper aims at developing a new method, namely double-threshold strategy, to find such changes within 3-D building models in the region of interest with the aid of light detection and ranging (LIDAR) data. The proposed modeling scheme comprises three steps, namely, data pre-processing, change detection in building areas, and validation. In the first step for data pre-processing, data registration was carried out based on multi-source data. The second step for data pre-processing requires using the triangulation of an irregular network of data points collected by Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR), focusing on those locations containing walls or other above-ground objects that were ever removed. Then, change detection in the building models can be made possible for finding differences in height by comparing the LIDAR point measurements and the estimates of the building models. The results may be further refined using spectral and feature information collected from aerial imagery. A double-threshold strategy was applied to cope with the highly sensitive thresholding often encountered when using the rule-based approach. Finally, ground truth data were used for model validation. Research findings clearly indicate that the double-threshold strategy improves the overall accuracy from 93.1% to 95.9%.

Satellite remote sensing technology and the science associated with evaluation of land use and land cover (LULC) in an urban region makes use of the wide range images and algorithms. Improved land management capacity is critically dependent on real-time or near real-time monitoring of land-use/land cover change (LUCC) to the extent to which solutions to a whole host of urban/rural interface development issues may be well managed promptly. Yet previous processing with LULC methods is often time-consuming, laborious, and tedious making the outputs unavailable within the required time window. This paper presents a new image classification approach based on a novel neural computing technique that is applied to identify the LULC patterns in a fast growing urban region with the aid of 2.5-meter resolution SPOT-5 image products. The classifier was constructed based on the partial Lanczos extreme learning machine (PL-ELM), which is a novel machine learning algorithm with fast learning speed and outstanding generalization performance. Since some different classes of LULC may be linked with similar spectral characteristics, texture features and vegetation indexes were extracted and included during the classification process to enhance the discernability. A validation procedure based on ground truth data and comparisons with some classic classifiers prove the credibility of the proposed PL-ELM classification approach in terms of the classification accuracy as well as the processing speed. A case study in Dalian Development Area (DDA) with the aid of the SPOT-5 satellite images collected in the year of 2003 and 2007 and PL-ELM fully supports the monitoring needs and aids in the rapid change detection with respect to both urban expansion and coastal land reclamations.