July 2026

Conference Paper

Automatic Lane-Level Road Network Extraction from Aerial Imagery for Transportation Digital Twins

By:
Guo, Hetian; Shao, Yunli; Saroj, Abhilasha J; Xu, Guanhao ; Yuan, Jinghui ; Luo, Xiangyong ; Wang, Chieh
Page Number:
96-107
Book Title:
International Conference on Transportation and Development 2026
Publication Date:
July 2026
Conference Name:
ASCE International Conference on Transportation and Development 2026
Conference Location:
Detroit, Michigan, United States of America
Conference Sponsor:
Several
View DOI Listing:
https://doi.org/10.1061/9780784487013.009

Abstract

Accurate road networks are essential for credible traffic microsimulation and transportation digital twins, yet high-definition maps are often difficult to obtain due to limited availability, high cost, or proprietary restrictions. Some build networks from crowdsourced data, such as OpenStreetMap, but these sources often contain geometric and semantic inconsistencies. Others create networks manually, a process that is labor-intensive and difficult to scale. To address these limitations, this work presents an end-to-end pipeline that automatically extracts georeferenced, lane-level road networks from publicly available high-resolution satellite imagery and converts them into simulation-ready assets. The developed end-to-end pipeline has three primary modules: (1) A computer-vision-based module first detects directed lane geometries and intersection layouts. (2) A heuristic-based topology construction module then identifies approach and exit legs and establishes conflict-free lane-to-lane connections. (3) Finally, an automatic simulation-building module converts the extracted network into standard formats, e.g., OpenDRIVE, and generates routable SUMO networks. The framework supports both complete network construction from scratch and local-scale refinement of existing networks through lane-count correction, transition recovery, and geometric regularization. The proposed pipeline provides a practical pathway to generate traffic simulation networks from satellite imagery, significantly reducing manual reconstruction effort and enabling scalable, continuously updated transportation digital twins.