Abstract

Automated Extraction of Rooftops and Parking Lots From Orthoimagery
Track: Renewable Energy
Authors: Ryan Liddell

Black & Veatch (B&V) studied the direct generation potential of photovoltaics (PV) on rooftops and parking lots for an urban area in CA. Our client for this study was the California Public Utilities Commission. We used ArcGIS and Feature Analyst to extract features from approx. 1,000 tiles of USGS high-res orthoimagery. ModelBuilder was used to automate the workflow and allow for efficient batch processing. The results allowed B&V to accurately estimate the potential and costs of distributed PV.