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Web Links
- ICESat Begins Its Mission
ICESat is the latest in a series of NASA Earth Observing System spacecraft, following the Terra satellite launched in December 1999, and the Aqua satellite launched in May of 2002. The primary role of ICESat is to quantify ice sheet growth or retreat and to thereby answer questions concerning many related aspects of the Earth’s climate system, including global climate change and changes in sea level. ICESat includes the GLAS (the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System) instrument which is the first orbital laser-ranging (lidar) instrument for continuous global observations of the Earth. GLAS is an instrument designed to measure ice-sheet topography and associated atmospheric properties. In addition, operation of GLAS over land and water will provide along-track topography similar in principle to that measured by airborne lidar mapping sensors. If you are not familiar with ICESat, which was successfully launched January 12, be sure to checkout the ICESat web site. Lots of interesting
information and animations. This is an exciting program with a lot of
potential for interesting science and further promotion of laser remote
sensing as a viable commercial tool. Worth watching over the next couple
of years.
- National Science Foundation Workshop On NCALM
A workshop on a proposal to
establish
a National Center for Airborne Laser
Swath Mapping (NCALM) in the US was scheduled for April
25 - 26, 2003 (as our web site update went to press). Currently,
a proposal is under review by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to
establish and operate a National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping
(NCALM) to support university-based research. The purpose of NCALM is to
provide research quality data for NSF supported researchers and to
provide opportunities to advance the technology and its applications.
The Center will be led by the University of Florida and the University
of California, Berkeley.
This is a very interesting development in the US market; UoF and Dr. Carter's group has done some excellent work in this field (we love those accuracy specs) but we still have to wonder why the private sector is not seen as a potential partner on the data collection side? Is it not possible for the private sector to produce "research quality" data at a reasonable price?
- Canadian Consortium for LiDAR Environmental Applications Research
For a slightly different approach, consider this
initiative underway in Canada. In 2002, Canadian academic,
government and private sector lidar research stakeholders partnered up
to form the Canadian Consortium for
LiDAR Environmental
Applications Research (C-CLEAR). The effort was initiated to facilitate cost effective applied LiDAR research within the environmental assessment and natural resources monitoring communities. Ultimately, it is the goal of C-CLEAR to obtain access to a sensor (either through consortium purchase or private sector partnership) to be available for a wide range of projects throughout Canada. For information about the projects worked on to date and C-CLEAR's mandate see their web site.
- Airborne Laser Mapping of Long Island’s South Shore
In July 2002 a team of researchers from Southampton College and the International Hurricane Center announced a laser-mapping program for Long Island's South Shore. The joint Airborne Laser Terrain Mapping Team plans to map the southern coast of Long Island in a Cessna 337 airplane using "break-through technology and a $1.3 million supercomputer" (love those beat reporters). The mapping program calls for data acquisition of both lidar and color digital imagery. Dr. Stephen Leatherman, director of the project, outlined the project's four goals: to find out long-term trends of shoreline growth and recession, update government data that is currently obsolete, create a benchmark of Long Island's topography and sand movement with new 3-D imaging technology, and get preliminary data for coastal evacuation in case of a hurricane. The last topographic mapping of Long Island was done by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1954 with an accuracy good to only about five feet. The project will provide public officials and researchers with invaluable data for predicting beach and coastline evolution as well as erosion and storm surge damage from coastal storms and hurricanes. The project is being funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and is sponsored by the Eastern Long Island Coastal Conservation Alliance, the International Hurricane Center in Miami and Southampton College of Long Island University.
- CSIRO - Vegetation Canopy Lidar Program
Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
(CSIRO) is one
of the world's largest and most diverse scientific global research organizations.
Currently CSIRO research is seeking to harness lidar technology to significantly
enhance the capacity to describe the status and dynamics of vegetation
from forest stand to continental scales. This will have immediate applications
in forestry, land cover management and global change research. By using
data from various sources, some lidar trials, simulation and their
base of experience, they are identifying how these tools can
be put to work. CSIRO recently commissioned a business plan development
to assess the commercial potential for large footprint, waveform capture
LiDAR-based forest mapping and is now seeking partners to see systems
built in Australia.
- NASA Laser Altimeters: From Waveforms to Photons
NASA researchers contiue to push the bounderies of laser altimetry sensor design on several scientific instrument programs. An excellent presentation by Dr. David Harding from NASA Goddard at the 2002 Workshop on Three-Dimensional Analysis of Forest Structure and Terrain highlighted some of these developments in the area of return signal analysis. As discussed in the presentation, waveform-recording systems provide very detailed canopy height distributions but, as implemented to date, suffer from comparatively low spatial resolution. Discrete return systems achieve highly resolved spatial sampling but suffer from leading-edge ranging biases and complexities and operational inefficiencies in filtering data point clouds to differentiate ground and canopy returns (as any commercial data provider well-knows). Alternative laser ranging approaches being examined by NASA include multi-threshold, multi-threshold centroid, and photon counting receivers. If you are interested in where commercial instrument design may be heading, it is well-worth staying informed about NASA's developments.
- Experimental
Advanced Airborne Research LiDAR(EAARL)
As one example of on-going NASA research in laser altimetry sensor design
you may want to review the EAARL (Experimental Advanced Airborne Research
LiDAR) program. This is a new airborne lidar sensor that provides unprecedented
capabilities to survey coral reefs, nearshore benthic habitats, coastal
vegetation, and sandy beaches. The EAARL sensor suite includes a raster-scanning-water
penetrating full-waveform adaptive lidar, a down-looking color digital
camera, an array of precision kinematic GPS receivers which provide
for sub-meter geo-referencing of each laser and hyper spectral sample.
It will soon also include a hyperspectral scanner. EAARL has the unique
real-time capability to detect, capture, and automatically adapt to
each laser return backscatter over a large signal dynamic range and
keyed to considerable variations in vertical complexity of the surface
target. These features enable automatic adaptive acquisition of dramatically
different surface types in a single EAARL overflight. This makes EAARL
well suited for mapping applications such as coral reefs, bright sandy
beaches, coastal vegetation, and trees where extreme variations in the
laser backscatter complexity and signal strength are caused by different
physical and optical characteristics.
- FEMA’s Interagency Geospatial Preparedness Team (IGPT)
FEMA's IGPT is tasked with assessing the need for geospatial resources
to support all-hazards emergency management and homeland security missions,
assessing the current availability of geospatial information (data),
systems (technologies) and expertise (people & organizations), reviewing
the status of commercial geospatial technologies and evaluating the
gap between the requirements, holdings, system capabilities and expertise.
Their objective is to deliver a program strategy by the end of 2003
that will be the blueprint for the US government when considering the
geospatial component of national preparedness and homeland security.
We were encouraged to hear directly from the head of IGPT (Susan Kalweit)
that lidar mapping technology is now seen as a key tool in providing
the elevation component of the framework data layer required for national
preparedness and homeland security, especially in urban environments.
However there are issues related to LiDAR technology that IGPT is still
investigating; what are the quality and cost trade-offs that need to
be considered, what are suitable combinations of lidar with traditional
technologies or other advanced technologies (IfSAR), where does lidar
fit in the spectrum of tools available for emergency response and recovery
management?. After discussing the IGPT's needs in this area, the ASPRS
LiDAR Committee has committed to writing a briefing paper for IGPT
that will review and assess the domestic US commercial lidar sector’s
assets, capabilities, strengths and weaknesses in the context of national
preparedness and homeland security. This will also probably include
private sector firms in Canada & Mexico. The goal is to create a
briefing paper that can be incorporated in IGPT’s program as both a
capabilities assessment and a reference database for government agencies
looking to the commercial sector for lidar mapping capabilities and
expertise.
- Puget Sound Offer LIDAR Data Free on the Web
The Puget Sound Lidar Consortium (PSLC) has seen much interest in the lidar data sets it has collected in the Pacific Northwest from students, educators and researchers. For example, one recent request for topographical data came from a graduate student who is considering a comparative study of landslide hazard identification with lidar data and photogrammetry. Other applications involve the early stages of road and utility planning, wildlife habitat planning, erosion and water runoff control, forestry management, and line-of-sight planning for structures such as cell towers. The PSLC has already collected lidar data for more than the 3000 square miles it originally set out to cover, including the Kitsap Peninsula and the city of Seattle water utility’s service area. Much of this is in the public domain and available upon request. Interesting sample downloads are available directly form their web site.
- ISPRS Workshops in 2003
There are two lidar/IfSAR workshops coming up this
year
sponsored by ISPRS working groups that should be of interest to lidar mapping enthusiasts:
[1] Joint Workshop of WG I/3 and WG II/2: Three-Dimensional Mapping from InSAR and LIDAR
(17-19 June, Portland, OR)
[2]
Workshop of
WG III/3: 3-D Reconstruction From Airborne Laserscanner and InSAR Data (8-10 Oct., Dresden, Germany)
You may also want to check out:
The 4th International Symposium on Mobile Mapping Technology "MMT 2003" (25-27 August, Kunming, China)
For a list of all ISPRS events or links to specific workshop web sites, check the ISPRS online calender.
- List
of LiDAR-Related Literature
We often get asked for references or bibliographies of papers and scientific articles related to lidar mapping technology. Unfortunately we have not had the time to set-up such a list at airbornelasermapping.com but the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich is a good place to start.
- Updated Web Links
We
have updated our page of web links to companies, research and
government organizations, software vendors and other stakeholders in
lidar technology.
Out of Focus
Our focus on this site is the application of airborne laser technology for commercial survey applications, primarily topographic mapping and related
fields, but we realize that there are other applications of laser altimetry, lidar remote-sensing and SAR that may also be of interest to our visitors.
So from time-to-time we present items and links that are interesting but out of our main focus.
If you are looking for our previous Out of Focus features on Airborne Laser Bathymetry, the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, or the Shuttle Radar Topography
Mission, you can find them here.
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