Semi-Automatic Method for Constructing 2D and 3D Indoor GIS Maps based on Point Clouds from Terrestrial LiDAR

In rapidly developing urban areas that include high-rise, large, and complex buildings, indoor and outdoor maps in GIS become a basis for utilizing and sharing information pertaining to various aspects of the real world. Although an indoor mapping has gained much attentions, research efforts are mostly in 2D and 3D modeling of terrain and buildings. Therefore, to facilitate fast and accurate construction of indoor GIS, this paper proposes a semi-automatic method consisting of preprocessing, 2D mapping, and 3D mapping stages. The preprocessing is designed to estimate heights of building interiors and to identify noise data from point clouds. In the 2D mapping, a floor map is extracted with a tracing grid and a refinement method. In the 3D mapping, a 3D wireframe model is created with heights from the preprocessing stage. 3D mesh data converted from noise data is combined with the 3D wireframe model for detail modeling. The proposed method was applied to point clouds depicting a hallway in a building. Experiment results indicate that the proposed method can be utilized to construct 2D and 3D maps for indoor GIS.