Classification of aerial laser scanning point clouds using machine learning: a comparison between Random Forest and Tensorflow

In this investigation a comparison between two machine learning (ML) models for semantic classification of an aerial laser scanner point cloud is presented. One model is Random Forest (RF), the other is a multi-layer neural network, TensorFlow (TF). Accuracy results were compared over a growing set of training data, using a stratified independent sampling over classes from 5% to 50% of the total dataset. Results show RF to have average F1=0.823 for the 9 classes considered, whereas TF had average F1=0.450. F1 values where higher for RF than TF, due to complexity in the determination of a suitable composition of the hidden layers of the neural network in TF, and this can likely be improved to reach higher accuracy values. Further study in this sense is planned