OpenTopography Blog

Information and discussion related to high-resolution LiDAR topography for the Earth sciences

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Posts from April 2010

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Southwest Idaho Regional LiDAR Conference

Posted on Fri, April 30, 2010 by Chris Crosby in Meetings

OpenTopography received the following information about this upcoming event in Boise via email today.  The conference theme is “Light Detection and Ranging laser technology (LiDAR) to plan for, mitigate and solve public safety issues” and the list of topics looks interesting.  Details in the announcement below:

On Thursday, June 17th the Southwest Idaho Geographic Information System (GIS) Users Group (SWIG) is holding its Summer 2010 Regional Conference at the University of Idaho’s Water Center Room 162, at 322 East Front Street, Boise Idaho 83702 from 9:00am to 5:00pm. The event is FREE. Visit: http://swig.gisidaho.org/upcoming_mtg.html

Topics for this event are designed to appeal to all audience types: from non-GIS users who are more interested in policy related issues or applications of this technology to the advanced GIS web programmer.

The theme for this conference is “Light Detection and Ranging laser technology (LiDAR) to plan for, mitigate and solve public safety issues”. Local professionals have volunteered to present on important topics related to their technical field of expertise. These experts include:

1. Boise: Kevin Jones (Idaho State University) has committed to a presentation titled “GIS Web Programming” that is billed as a technical survey of programming scripts used in the technical application necessary to create an interactive interface at a GIS enabled website.

2. Boise: Nicole Hanson (GIS Professional For Hire!!!) has committed to a presentation titled “Tips and Tricks” that is billed as a comprehensive presentation on increasing efficiency of operating the GIS system, accessing the built-in shortcuts of the program appealing to all users and skill levels.

3. Boise/Meridian: Bret Hazell (3di West) and Jason Paff (Power Engineers) have committed to a duel presentation titled “Mapping Technologies for Land Planning” that is billed as a
comparison of the strengths and weaknesses of using both photogrammetry and LiDAR technologies in land planning.

4. Pocatello: Derrick Sharp (Whisper Mountain Inc.,) has committed to a presentation titled “Hazard Mitigation using LiDAR” that is billed as a case study of using lidar to create the evacuation plans for Bonneville County in the event of a dam breach.

5. Boise: Brian Kienle (Pictometry International) has committed to a presentation titled “The Use of Oblique Imagery in Today’s World” that is billed as how LiDAR data is collected in support of various topics, including forest fire fuels modeling.

6. Boise: Jay Breidenbach (National Weather Service, NOAA) has committed to a presentation tentatively titled “Inundation Mapping for Advance Hydrologic Predictive Services” that is billed as a survey of the NOAA’s Advanced Hydrologic Predictive Services (AHPS) capability to provide the emergency management community with detailed inundation maps corresponding to rivers. These maps have been used to plan flood mitigation activities and protect the general public from hazardous conditions during a flood event.

7. Boise: Craig Thompson (National Park Service) has committed to a presentation titled “GIS in the Federal Government” that is billed as how Geographical Information System is being used in fire prediction and prevention treatments.

Presentation Schedule has not yet been established and is subject to change until May 26, 2010.

See http://swig.gisidaho.org/upcoming_mtg.html for the most up-to-date information or Contact: Ryan McDaniel, (208) 323-2288, Planning Committee Chair.

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NCALM moves to Univ. of Houston

Posted on Mon, April 12, 2010 by Chris Crosby in News

The University of Houston put out a press release today - National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping Comes to Houston - announcing that one half of the NSF-supported NCALM LiDAR mapping center has moved to UH (the other half of NCALM remains at University of California, Berkley).  Formerly at University of Florida, NCALM acquires high-resolution topographic data for NSF-researchers.  OpenTopography has worked closely with NCALM on a number of projects, most notably the EarthScope LiDAR project where data were collected by NCALM and are hosted for community access by OpenTopography.

Read the full press release: National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping Comes to Houston

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Golden Gate LiDAR Project

Posted on Mon, April 05, 2010 by Chris Crosby in Data • News

Another new LiDAR data collection funded with stimulus dollars that I recently became aware of is the ARRA Golden Gate LiDAR Project.  Led by San Francisco State University and funded by USGS ARRA, this project will collect data in coastal regions around San Francisco:

The project extent is based upon the watershed boundaries for all watersheds that contain the lands of Marin County and San Francisco County. It also includes the watersheds that contain Point Reyes National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area.  The area of interest includes watersheds that are also located in southern Sonoma County and northern San Mateo County and when combined total ~835 square miles (planimetric estimate) of area. The project area includes the Marin Peninsula and San Francisco Peninsula that form the western edge of San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay.

Like the Northeast ARRA data collection I just posted about, the Golden Gate data sound like they will be collected to the meet the USGS-NGP Base LiDAR Specification with 2m nominal point spacing.  The data will be available via the USGS CLICK archive and will be incorporated into the USGS 1/9 arc-second NED layer.  The project website indicates that data collection may have begun last month.

For the OpenTopography community, these Golden Gate data are likely of great interest given that they expand upon the existing Bay Area LiDAR coverage provided by the OpenTopography-hosted Northern California EarthScope LiDAR and are designed to capture full watersheds.  Although lower resolution than the data collected by EarthScope, these data should be very interesting to a large number of users.

Map of the collection area from the Golden Gate LiDAR project website:

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LiDAR for the Northeast Project Funded

Posted on Mon, April 05, 2010 by Chris Crosby in Data • News

A proposal for an extensive LiDAR collection of coastal regions of the Northeastern U.S. (New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine) has been funded by the USGS with American Reinvestment and Recovery Act money.  The proposal, led by the Maine Office of GIS, is to collect LiDAR data over ~13,500 square miles.  MEGIS has an announcement about the funding.  From the LiDAR for the Northeast proposal (PDF):

Full or partial county lidar collections for all coastal areas in New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, including many coastal watersheds and subwatersheds. The total area proposed is 13,561 square miles in a continuous swath with no gaps, including all coastal towns in the region, towns adjacent to major tidal rivers, and other adjacent areas deemed important to the stakeholders. Of this area, 8979 square miles is new data, 1056 square miles is being collected by FEMA, and 3526 square miles of other existing data (not in CLICK or NED). Only 58 sq. mi. of this entire region is currently in CLICK and only 410 sq. mi. are in the 1/9th arc-second NED

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Map of the project area from the LiDAR for the Northeast proposal:

Data will be collected to the meet the recently released USGS-NGP Base LiDAR Specification, and thus will have 2m nominal point spacing.  As is required by the ARRA LiDAR RFP, all of these data will eventually end up in the USGS CLICK archive and will be incorporated into the USGS 1/9 arc-second NED layer.

It appears that the proposal pulls together an impressive collection of federal and state agencies and non-profit organizations to build a consortium and generate matching funds.  This looks like a great project and will produce a lot of new and valuable data. 

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LiDAR 101 Video

Posted on Thu, April 01, 2010 by Chris Crosby in Education • Resources • Video

I just stumbled upon this LiDAR 101 video, produced by the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at University of Georgia, while Googling for something else.  In ~13 minutes, it does a nice job of summarizing LiDAR technology, data products, the costs associated with acquiring data, and various applications.  It is worth a watch if you are looking for a quick crash-course in LiDAR or need a video to show in the classroom:

Are there other good introduction to LiDAR videos out there?  Leave a comment if you are aware of others.

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