OpenTopo

Introduction

The OpenTopography Portal is a GEON Project initiative to build an online system that provides integrated access to high-resolution topographic data, web-based processing tools, and enables the user community to share knowledge, experiences and resources.  The OpenTopography Portal incorporates the GEON LiDAR Workflow (GLW) system for LiDAR point cloud access and processing and adds mechanisms for access to other data types.  The goal of OpenTopography is to provide a portal where access to various public domain airborne and terrestrial LiDAR, bathymetry, and other topographic data can be centralized.  We are currently seeking collaborations and partnerships that enable us to make more of these valuable data sets available online.  If you have data you’d like to share, resources such as tools or documents to contribute, or are interested in collaborating, please .

The OpenTopography Portal is a collaboration between computer scientists at San Diego Supercomputer Center and earth scientists at Arizona State University (see the People page for information on the OpenTopography team).

Motivations

Over the past decade, there has been dramatic growth in the acquisition of publicly funded high-resolution topographic and bathymetric data for scientific, environmental, engineering and planning purposes.  Because of the richness of these data sets, they are often extremely valuable beyond the initial application that drove their acquisition and thus are of interest to a large and varied user community.  However, because of the massive volumes of data produced by high-resolution mapping technologies such as LiDAR, it is often difficult to manage and distribute these datasets via the Internet.  Furthermore, the datasets can be technically challenging to work with, requiring specific software and computing resources that are not readily available to many users.  Our goal is to use the OpenTopography Portal as a way to democratize access to high resolution topographic data and to allow users to share resources and knowledge.

Collaborators

The OpenTopography Portal is built on collaborations with a number of groups.  If you have data or other resources you’d like to make available via the OpenTopography Portal, please

GeoEarthScope LiDAR Data:

OpenTopography (GEON) is the primary distribution pathway for LiDAR data acquired by the GeoEarthScope project.  Once complete, LiDAR data for active faults throughout the western United States will be available through OpenTopography.  For all GeoEarthScope data sets, LiDAR point cloud data, standard DEMs, and Google Earth hillshade visualizations will be available.

SIO Visualization Center:

OpenTopography is currently collaborating with the Scripts Institute of Oceanography Visualization Center to incorporate visualizations of B4 and GeoEarthScope LiDAR topography into our portal so that they can be accessed along with the other data products.

INTERFACE

INTERFACE (INTERdisciplinary alliance for digital Field data ACquisition and Exploration) is funded by NSF and managed by UNAVCO to help geoscientists in obtaining high resolution and precision, 3D surface data. INTERFACE provides a one-stop shop for users at any experience level to obtain instrumentation, software, and instruction in the collection of earth surface data by Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR).  GEON will be building upon OpenTopography’s LiDAR distribution and processing capability to incorporate INTERFACE TLS topographic data and new processing tools.