airbornelasermapping.com

A reference source on an emerging technology

Research Directory

We will be updating and adding to this Research Directory as we obtain more information about the various research groups and their activities. For now we are simply reposting some of the research related news, updates and links from the past six months. The directory will eventually be index and presented in a manner similar to the Industry Directory so if you know of any research groups or related links that would be appropriate for this directory, please let us know.

Please note that we have compiled a separate, more detailed profile of NASA's various airborne laser systems because of the prominence and scope of NASA's research efforts in this field and their related efforts with NOAA and the USGS.

• (05/99) The UK Environment Agency has been using an airborne laser mapping system for a variety of applications related to their environmental survey work. In particular they have focused their efforts on coastal surveys, beach mapping and studies related to river flood plains. The Glamorgan Coastal Monitoring Initiative is their latest campaign that will include laser data as part of a larger initiative. A good example of how airborne laser mapping continues to penetrate the more traditional survey fields.
  
  
• (05/99) If you are interested in learning about the application of airborne laser data to research fields such as flood plain modelling, we recommend you read Integration of High Resolution Topographic Data with Floodplain Flow Models. This is an excellent paper on the integration of airborne laser data in to a sophisticated flood simulation model. Be warned, if the St. Venant variants of the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations are not your cup of tea, you may just want to "browse" the article. For more examples of specific applications of airborne laser mapping to research-oriented topics visit our new journals page, where you will find links to other research papers and conference presentations available online.
  
  
• (03/99) In a slightly different vein, the Milford Haven Harbour Authority was recently fined a record £4 million (US$6.5 million) for pollution caused by the Sea Empress oil tanker spill in west Wales nearly three years ago. Read how airborne laser scanning played a role in the successful prosecution of this environmental disaster. In addition to supporting litigation efforts, the UK Environment Agency uses their airborne laser mapping system to produce high resolution digital elevation models for flood defence and coastal erosion applications.  Unfortunately they do not appear to have any information about their airborne laser mapping activities available over the web at the current time.
  
  
• Dr. Hans-Gerd Maas and his associates at the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences of the Delft University of Technology have a number of interesting research projects related to airborne laser scanning. Their work is mainly focused on automatic feature extraction and modelling buildings from laser scanner data. They have worked closely with FLI-MAP, TopoSys, Optech ALTM and EagleScan DATIS data sets and their site includes several VRML models generated from FLI-MAP data.
  
  
• The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has a web site dedicated to Coastal Lidar Mapping. It includes an interesting discussion on the results of airborne laser mapping surveys done on the west coast of the US with NASA's ATM system, including a brief description of the system, and a cool but bandwidth-intensive interactive display of the lidar data. The site is well worth a visit.
  
  
• In 1998 the European Research Organisation for Experimental Photogrammetry (OEEPE), formed a working group focusing on airborne laser scanning and its applications within the mapping community. The main focus of the working group is the Project on Laser Data Acquisition. OEEPE is an interesting organisation with members from most European countries consisting of representatives from the various mapping authorities and universities. Both sites are well worth a visit!
  
  
• If you are in the mood to view some cool data, be sure to drop by this page at the School of Geography at The University of Nottingham and take a look at airborne laser data draped with corresponding imagery. The image on this page was created from airborne laser mapping data supplied by TopoSys Topographische Systemdaten GmbH and represents a 1m resolution DEM of an area of Karlsruhe, Germany.
  
  
• Founded in 1982, the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) is a non-profit, university-linked organisation fostering scientific research and technology development. The Environmental Information Systems Laboratory (EISL) at HARC with NASA and industry sponsors, has constructed the Airborne LIDAR Topographic Mapping System (ALTMS) sensor that generates high-resolution topographic maps (1 ft. in elevation and 5 to 10 ft. in x and y). ALTMS is being commercialised by TerraPoint LLC for applications such as floodplain mapping, pipeline monitoring, coastal erosion mapping, mineral exploration, and ecosystem characterisation. For more background information read our profile of HARC.
  
  
• The Center for Mapping (CFM) is both a NASA Commercial Space Center and an Ohio State University interdisciplinary research centre focused on spatial data technologies, including remote sensing, geodesy using the Global Positioning System (GPS), inertial navigation systems (INS), photogrammetry, image processing, computer vision, image understanding, modelling, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). For more information and related links read our profile OSU/CFM