Accuracy for DEM and Orthoimages derived from SPOT HRS Stereo Data without using GCP

ISPRS and CNES announced the HRS (High Resolution Stereo) Scientific Assessment Program during the ISPRS Commission I Symposium in Denver in November 2002. 9 test areas throughout the world have been selected for this program. One of the test sites is located in Bavaria, Germany, for which the PI comes from DLR. For a second region, which is situated in Catalonia Barcelona and surroundings DLR has the role of a Co-Investigator. The goal is to derive a DEM from the along-track stereo data of the SPOT HRS sensor and to assess the accuracy by comparison with ground control points and DEM data of superior quality. For the derivation of the DEM, the stereo processing software, developed at DLR for the MOMS-2P three line stereo camera is used. As a first step, the interior and exterior orientation of the camera, delivered as ancillary data (DORIS and ULS) are extracted. According to CNES these data should lead to an absolute orientation accuracy of about 30 m. No bundle block adjustment with ground control is used in the first step of the photogrammetric evaluation. A dense image matching, using very dense positions as kernel centers provides the parallaxes. The quality of the matching is controlled by forward and backward matching of the two stereo partners using the local least squares matching method. Forward intersection leads to points in object space which are then interpolated to a DEM of the region in a regular grid. Additionally, orthoimages are generated from the images of the two looking directions. The orthoimage and DEM accuracy is determined by using the ground control points and the available DEM data of superior accuracy (DEM derived from laser data and/or classical airborne photogrammetry). DEM filtering methods are applied and a comparison to SRTM-DEMs is performed. It is shown that a fusion of the DEMs derived from optical and radar data leads to higher accuracies. In the second step ground control points are used for bundle adjustment to improve the exterior orientation and the absolute accuracy of the SPOT-DE