Case Study: GEOinfo achieves automated, high-accuracy 20,000 km² land-use mapping with Trimble's INPHO and eCognition

Urban Planning Using Inpho and eCognition

GEOinfo, the Department of Surveying and Geo Information for the State Government of Lower Austria, needed a way to cost‑effectively analyze and standardize very large, multi‑source geospatial datasets (about 20,000 km2). Manual preparation of aerial imagery, LiDAR and surveying data was too slow and expensive, so the challenge was to automate concurrent processing of different data types and reliably produce reproducible land‑use and topographic products.

Using INPHO (TopDM and SCOP++) to manage and generate DTMs/DSMs from roughly 30,000 flight strips and eCognition (Developer and Server) for object‑based classification and change detection—with ArcGIS for mapping—GEOinfo automated tiled processing and stitching across the study area. The workflow delivered >94% accuracy for built‑up areas and >96% for forests, cut per‑building analysis costs from €2–4 down to €0.10–0.20, and enabled scalable, repeatable land‑use modeling and further multi‑year iterations.

GEOinfo

Michael Pregesbauer

Deputy Department Head