Extract building height from imagery

[WaleedAbbas]

Hello!

I am tasked to calculate the building height from high-to-mediem resolution imagery. is there a fast tool of calculating the height of structures in ArcGIS Pro version 3.1.0? Is there a tool I can use or add into the application?

[CodyPatterson]

Hey @WaleedAbbas 

There's a couple tools that I've used before, quite a long time ago, but they provided something similar to what you would need. Some of these may just have coordinate points, and the distance calculated using Calculate Geometry, here are the tools:

Surface Difference

Stereo Mapping tool set

Lidar Point tool set

Image Analyst tool set

I list the tool sets because I'm most familiar with the first tool, and these depend on the exact data you may have. If you have two points, you can also use the Extract Values to Points, or the Raster Calculator to manipulate the datasets.

Cody

[ThomasHoman]

Hi @WaleedAbbas 

Do you happen to have any 3d data available for this task - DEM, point cloud, etc? 

Sticking purely with the flat raster and no 3d data, you will need the date and time that the image was taken as base information, then you can use the sun angle and the cast shadow to calculate the building height. 

Easy sun angle tool - https://www.suncalc.org 

Building Height = Shadow Length * tan(Solar Elevation Angle)

[WaleedAbbas]

Deep thanks, Thomas

This was advantageous and insightful for me

[WilliamCooper]

Hi there!
You’re asking a great question, measuring building heights from high- to medium-resolution imagery in ArcGIS Pro 3.1.0 can indeed be done relatively quickly using built-in tools. If your imagery includes a proper sensor model and metadata, you can use the Image Mensuration tools on the Imagery tab:
Base to Top Height: Click the base and then the top of the building to measure its height directly.

Base to Top Shadow Height or Top to Top Shadow Height: Useful when shadows are present , these tools measure from the base or top of the structure to the shadow, improving accuracy especially when you also include a DEM for terrain correction ArcGIS Pro+1.

If you're seeking something automated or batch-oriented, note that ArcGIS Pro doesn't currently offer a fully automatic tool that extracts building heights en masse from imagery using just version 3.1.0. You might explore deep learning approaches or extract building footprints with height estimation through additional extensions, but these aren’t “fast tools” in the GUI sense.

[BillFox]

maybe something in here can help

nDSMs: How digital surface models and digital terrain models elevate your insights

https://community.esri.com/t5/human-brain-webgis-questions/ndsms-how-digital-surface-models-and-digi...