Abstract:Terrain features play an important role in cartography, earthquake geology, terrain classification and DEM production. In order to obtain terrain features more effectively, a rapid terrain features extraction algorithm of airborne LiDAR is proposed in this paper. Firstly, constructing the quadric surface fitting model, the geometric rules of airborne LiDAR data and fitting model are established. Then, the LM(levenberg-marquardt) algorithm is adopted to optimize the parameters of the topography and obtain the optimal results. In addition, the fitting time and fitting precision are calculated. Finally, the terrain features are extracted rapidly based on the terrain fitting model. To verify the algorithm’s efficiency and accuracy, the airborne LiDAR experiment indicates that when the optimal search radius is 2 m, the fitting time is only 0.02 s and RMSE is only 5.09 cm.