US Patent 8466915 Fusion of ground-based facade models with 3D building models

Systems and methods for fusing three-dimensional (3D) ground and airborne models for a geographical information system are described herein. A method embodiment includes aligning the ground and airborne models relative to one another, modifying three-dimensional mesh information in the ground and airborne models after the aligning to obtain modified ground and airborne models, merging the modified ground and airborne models to obtained a fused 3D model and storing the fused 3D model in memory for subsequent access by the geographical information system. A system embodiment includes a 3D model fuser configured to align the ground and airborne models relative to one another, modify three-dimensional mesh information in the ground and airborne models after the aligning to obtain modified ground and airborne models, and merge the modified ground and airborne models to obtained a fused 3D model, and a storage device that stores the fused 3D model for subsequent access by the geographical information system.