SUMMARY

A main advantage of terrestrial laser scanning is the possibility to nearly simultaneously acquire the geometrical positions of millions of object points in 3D. However this is also the main bottle neck of terrestrial laser scanning when it comes to data processing. In this paper a new strategy will be proposed, presented and applied in order to show how to overcome the discrepancies. The modelling and processing will be done based on surface parameters which will be efficiently derived from point cloud measurements. It will be shown, that there is no need for a triangularisation of the points prior to a derivation of significant surface parameters. In such a way enormous data reduction will be achieved. It becomes feasible to combine adjacent scans completely based on identical surface parameters derived from natural objects detected automatically in both scans. Natural objects may be used for geo-referencing as well. Characteristic lines can be derived from the intersection of surfaces. Due to the high point density of the scan, an increased improvement of the accuracy of the surface parameters will be achieved even for small extensions of the detected surfaces. Then even deformation analysis of walls of buildings can be based on surface parameters. From the surfac