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This study assesses the performance of a global Local Climate Zone (LCZ) product. We examined the built-type classes of LCZs in three major metropolitan areas within the U.S. A reference LCZ was constructed using a simple rule-based method based on high-resolution 3D building maps. Our evaluation demonstrated that the global LCZ product struggles to differentiate classes that demand precise building footprint information (Classes 6 and 9), and classes that necessitate the identification of subtle differences in building elevation (Classes 4-6). Additionally, we identified inconsistent tendencies, where the distribution of classes skews differently across different cities, suggesting the presence of a data distribution shift problem in the machine learning-based LCZ classifier. Our findings shed light on the uncertainties in global LCZ maps, help identify the LCZ classes that are the most challenging to distinguish, and offer insight into future plans for LCZ development and validation.

Despite substantial technological advancements, the comprehensive mapping of surface water, particularly smaller bodies (<1ha), continues to be a challenge due to a lack of robust, scalable methods. Standard methods require either training labels or site-specific parameter tuning, which complicates automated mapping and introduces biases related to training data and parameters. The reliance on water's reflectance properties, including LiDAR intensity, further complicates the matter, as higher-resolution images inherently produce more noise. To mitigate these difficulties, we propose a unique method that focuses on the geometric characteristics of water instead of its variable reflectance properties. Unlike preceding approaches, our approach relies entirely on 3D coordinate observations from airborne LiDAR data, taking advantage of the principle that connected surface water remains flat due to gravity. By harnessing this natural law in conjunction with connectivity, our method can accurately and scalably identify small water bodies, eliminating the need for training labels or repetitive parameter tuning. Consequently, our approach enables the creation of comprehensive 3D topographic maps that include both water and terrain, all performed in an unsupervised manner using only airborne laser scanning data, potentially enhancing the process of generating reliable 3D topographic maps. We validated our method across extensive and diverse landscapes, while comparing it to highly competitive Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI)-based methods and assessing it using a reference surface water map. In conclusion, our method offers a new approach to address persistent difficulties in robust, scalable surface water mapping and 3D topographic mapping, using solely airborne LiDAR data.

The digital terrain model (DTM) is fundamental geospatial data for various studies in urban, environmental, and Earth science. The reliability of the results obtained from such studies can be considerably affected by the errors and uncertainties of the underlying DTM. Numerous algorithms have been developed to mitigate the errors and uncertainties of DTM. However, most algorithms involve tricky parameter selection and complicated procedures that make the algorithm's decision rule obscure, so it is often difficult to explain and predict the errors and uncertainties of the resulting DTM. Also, previous algorithms often consider the local neighborhood of each point for distinguishing non-ground objects, which limits both search radius and contextual understanding and can be susceptible to errors particularly if point density varies. This study presents an open-source DTM generation algorithm for airborne LiDAR data that can consider beyond the local neighborhood and whose results are easily explainable, predictable, and reliable. The key assumption of the algorithm is that grounds are smoothly connected while non-grounds are surrounded by areas having sharp elevation changes. The robustness and uniqueness of the proposed algorithm were evaluated in geographically complex environments through tiling evaluation compared to other state-of-the-art algorithms.

Despite the substantial demand for high-quality, large-area building maps, no established open-source workflow for generating 2D and 3D maps currently exists. This study introduces an automated, open-source workflow for large-scale 2D and 3D building mapping utilizing airborne LiDAR data. Uniquely, our workflow operates entirely unsupervised, eliminating the need for any training procedures. We have integrated a specifically tailored DTM generation algorithm into our workflow to prevent errors in complex urban landscapes, especially around highways and overpasses. Through fine rasterization of LiDAR point clouds, we've enhanced building-tree differentiation, reduced errors near water bodies, and augmented computational efficiency by introducing a new planarity calculation. Our workflow offers a practical and scalable solution for the mass production of rasterized 2D and 3D building maps from raw airborne LiDAR data. Also, we elaborate on the influence of parameters and potential error sources to provide users with practical guidance. Our method's robustness has been rigorously optimized and tested using an extensive dataset (> 550 km$^2$), and further validated through comparison with deep learning-based and hand-digitized products. Notably, through these unparalleled, large-scale comparisons, we offer a valuable analysis of large-scale building maps generated via different methodologies, providing insightful evaluations of the effectiveness of each approach. We anticipate that our highly scalable building mapping workflow will facilitate the production of reliable 2D and 3D building maps, fostering advances in large-scale urban analysis. The code will be released upon publication.