Recent development in remote sensing technologies has stimulated a great interest in its application in
large-scale mapping. For example, the Ikonos satellite images, available since 2000, have an improved
resolution of 1m that afford mapping of a lot of ground objects from the satellite images. However, the
use of these images in high-accuracy mapping applications has been limited since the sensor model
parameters are not yet released. On the other hand, Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) is a fast
method for sampling the earth’s surface with a high density and high accuracy point cloud that is used
to generate high density and high accuracy Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) and DSMs. Integrating both
technologies makes it possible to provide reliable and automatic solutions for large-scale mapping
applications, 3-D visualization, GIS and change detection. In this research a 1-m resolution LIDAR-based
DEM is used to orthorectify a single Geo-panchromatic Ikonos image. The LIDAR-based DEM is first
rectified using 12 Ground Control Points (GCPs) surveyed using the Differential GPS (DGPS) technique.
The LIDAR-based DEM is then used as a source for other GCPs that are used to orthorectify the Ikonos
image. Different 2-D transformation models are used with different sets and distributions of GCPs. The
planimetric Root Mean Square Errors (RMSE) achieved, using these models, is about 5m. The
relationship between the planimetric errors and the elevations of the checkpoints suggested using 3-D
to 2-D transformation models. Three different types of these models are examined and their results are
reported. The results showed that less than 2m mapping accuracy could be achieved using the 3-D to
2-D transformation models. These results suggest that using a single panchromatic Ikonos image
together with a 1-m resolution LIDAR-based DEM could achieve the required planimetric accuracy for
1:5000 topographic maps.