Integration of Aerial Thermal Imagery, LiDAR Data and Ground Surveys for Surface Temperature Mapping in Urban Environments

A single-band surface temperature retrieval method is proposed, aiming at achieving a better accuracy by exploiting the integration of aerial thermal images with LiDAR data and ground surveys. LiDAR data allow the generation of a high resolution digital surface model and a detailed modeling of the Sky-View Factor (SVF). Ground surveys of surface temperature and emissivity, instead, are used to estimate the atmospheric parameters involved in the model (through a bounded least square adjustment) and for a first assessment of the accuracy of the results. The RMS of the difference between the surface temperatures computed from the model and measured on the check sites ranges between 0.8 °C and 1.0 °C, depending on the algorithm used to calculate the SVF. Results are in general better than the ones obtained without considering SVF and prove the effectiveness of the integration of different data sources. The proposed approach has the advantage of avoiding the modeling of the atmosphere conditions, which is often difficult to achieve with the desired accuracy; on the other hand, it is highly dependent on the accuracy of the data measured on the ground.