DEM automatic extraction on Rio de Janeiro from WV2 stereo pair images

The use of three-dimensional data has become, for a lot of mapping applications, very important. DEM are applied for modelling purposes, i.e. the 3D city model generation, but principally for imagery orthorectification. In aerial photogrammetry is well known the suitable use of stereo imagery to produce an accurate DEM, but the limits of the process (cost, schedule of data collection, highly technical staff) and the new advanced digital image processing algorithms have open the work scenario to the remote sensing data. This research has wanted to investigate the possibility to obtain accurate DEMs by means of automatic terrain extraction algorithms implemented in Leica Photogrammetry Suite (LPS) from stereoscopic remote sensing images collected by DigitalGlobe’s WorldView-2 (WV2) satellite. The DEM of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and the correspondent digital orthoimages have been the results.