OpenTopography Blog

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

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Category: 2010 Haiti EQ

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Recap: Accessing Haiti Earthquake LiDAR Data

Posted on Mon, June 21, 2010 by Chris Crosby in 2010 Haiti EQ • Data

Following the January 12th, 2010 Haiti earthquake I wrote a number of blog posts related to the post-earthquake LiDAR data that were collected by the Center for Imaging Science at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Kucera International, and ImageCat, Inc (with funding from the World Bank), and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA).  As a result of these posts OpenTopography gets quite a bit of traffic from people looking for information about these data.  Although discussed in previous posts, we still get emails asking how to access the data.

Given that there appears to be some confusion, here is a quick summary of how to access the publicly available Haiti lidar data products.  If you are aware of other pathways to the data leave a comment and I’ll update the list.

Point cloud data:

The World Bank funded data are available from the RIT Information Products Laboratory for Emergency Response (IPLER) Haiti earthquake page.  Available products include classified point clouds in LAS format and first return (SEM) and bare earth (DEM) terrain models in GeoTIFF formats.  From the IPLER Haiti page:

Data can be DOWNLOADED: Anonymous FTP (not an SFTP) using thor.cis.rit.edu OR the WASP HTTP Site

UPDATE August 5th, 2010: OpenTopography is now hosting the full World Bank - ImageCat Inc. - RIT Haiti Earthquake LiDAR point cloud dataset.  You can access these data HERE.


Gridded Products (DEMs):

First return (SEM) and bare earth (DEM) terrain models in GeoTIFF formats (derived from the LAS point cloud data) are available via the IPLER Haiti FTP and HTTP sites listed above, or from an FTP site hosted by the USGS that was deployed to host earthquake-related data: http://edcftp.cr.usgs.gov/pub/data/disaster/201001_Earthquake_Haiti/

Google Earth Image Overlays:

Using the gridded World Bank LiDAR data downloaded from the USGS FTP site above, I generated a cache of hillshade imagery and a network linked KML file to access these images in Google Earth.  Download of the KML file and more information can be found in this blog post: Haiti LiDAR imagery in Google Earth

NGA ALIRT LiDAR:

Access to NGA ALIRT LiDAR data are via the NGA Haiti ALIRT page, which provides an overview map of the collection area and a link to download ”Geospatial Data Files”.  Products range from movies and PDF visuals of data to DSMs in GeoTIFF format.

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Haiti LiDAR imagery in Google Earth

Posted on Thu, February 11, 2010 by Chris Crosby in 2010 Haiti EQ • Data • Google Earth

As discussed in previous blog posts (here and here), LiDAR data have been collected over parts of Haiti following the January 12th earthquake.  The data collected by the Center for Imaging Science at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), Kucera International, and ImageCat, Inc., has recently become available via an FTP site maintained by the USGS that is hosting geospatial data acquired in response to the Haiti earthquake.  These data were collected during a campaign between January 21st and the 27th.

In order to make these data easier for all users to access, I downloaded and processed the filtered (bare earth) and unfiltered DEM data into hillshade images (315 degree illumination angle, 1 meter resolution) that can be viewed in Google Earth.  The approach used was similar to what I’ve done for all of the EarthScope LiDAR imagery available via KML (more info is available in this AGU abstract).  The result is roughly ~1.5 GB of hillshade imagery for Haiti hosted on OpenTopography servers that can be browsed seamlessly in Google Earth.  Download the KML file using the button below and open in Google Earth to get started:

NOTES:

• The LiDAR topography data set from which these images were derived was provided by the Center for Imaging Science at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and Kucera International, respectively, under contract to ImageCat, Inc. The Haiti campaign was funded by the World Bank and the Global Facility for Disaster Recovery and Recovery (GFDRR) and have made all data available in the public domain. More information about these data can be found at the RIT Information Products Laboratory for Emergency Response (IPLER) 2010 Haiti Earthquake page.
• The extent of the LiDAR data is shown by the cyan colored outlines.  The images will load once the user has zoomed into an area of interest.  The imagery becomes progressively higher resolution as you zoom in.
• All of the imagery is accessed via “Network Link” to servers in San Diego, thus a strong and consistent internet connection is required.
• The transparency of the LiDAR hillshades can be adjusted using the slider bar at the bottom of the PLACES menu in the left hand navigation bar.

EXAMPLES:

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ILMF meeting will highlight Haiti LiDAR

Posted on Tue, February 09, 2010 by Chris Crosby in 2010 Haiti EQ • Data • News

The International LiDAR Mapping Forum (ILMF), a LiDAR industry conference in Denver next month, has just announced in a press release the addition of two presentations related to LiDAR data collected over Haiti (see this post and this post for previous discussion of Haiti LiDAR).

One presentation will be by Ken Hudnut of the USGS, who will discuss the application of post-earthquake LiDAR to evaluation of the ground rupture - or in this case the lack of rupture - associated with the event:

Imagery of the region damaged by the M 7 Haiti earthquake, including high-resolution photography and airborne LiDAR, has revealed a variety of ground failure that resulted from shaking. Surprisingly, the Enriquillo Fault seems to have not ruptured at the ground surface, so the negative result obtained from imagery has significant implications. The USGS issued a statement, based on imagery analysis, that because it is clear that the rupture of the Enriquillo Fault was clearly farther west than Port-au-Prince, and because rupture was buried deep on the fault, there is a significant risk of not only regular aftershocks, but also the threat of a subsequent large event that could occur even closer to Port-au-Prince. The probability of one or more subsequent earthquakes of M 7 or greater increased by about 3% for the 30 days following 21 January 2010. Although this is a low probability, it would be a potentially very high impact event. High-resolution imagery was crucial to this assessment.

Ken is a friend of OpenTopography and was a co-instructor at our Southern California Earthquake Center-sponsored short course on application of LiDAR data to studying active faults this past December.

The second ILMF presentation will be by representatives of Kucera International Inc. who, in collaboration with the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and ImageCat, with funding from the World Bank, performed a high resolution aerial LiDAR and multispectral survey of primary earthquake damaged areas and fault zones:

Kucera’s presentation will review the performance of the aerial survey, the expedited processing and distribution of the aerial data, and potential future refinement and applications of the data.

I’ll be attending the ILMF meeting and I look forward to both of these presentations.  The Haiti earthquake is an important event in terms of being a model for rapid collection of LiDAR following a large earthquake, and I look forward to hearing about the lesson’s learned by both the science users of the data, and the acquisition and processing team.

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A quick look at NGA LiDAR from Haiti

Posted on Wed, January 27, 2010 by Chris Crosby in 2010 Haiti EQ • Data • News

As I pointed out in my last post, there has been a concerted effort by a number of groups to acquire LiDAR data over Haiti in the wake of the January 12th earthquake.  In addition to the Rochester Institute of Technology and Navy groups operating in Haiti, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is also collecting data using the ALIRT instrument (described here I think).  Some NGA LiDAR data products are available via the NGA Haiti Earthquake Crisis Relief site.  The LiDAR data products are available in a somewhat haphazard form via the Haiti Filtered LiDAR subpage.  Most of the “data” on this page are actually PDFs and PowerPoint files showing images of the data.  However, there are a few actual data files - one LAS point cloud file and a few DEMs in 32-bit GeoTIFF format.

Since this is the first post-earthquake data I’ve seen available to the public, I pulled a few of these files and have been looking at them.  Below is a screen capture of the LAS file (320,900 pts), which is described as the National Palace, but appears to actually be data from a neighborhood just NW of the Palace:

(UPDATE 02/04/10 - NGA has apparently removed the actual LAS file)

I gridded the point cloud data above at 25 centimeter resolution and exported it along with the data set footprint to Google Earth.  Shown here:

Download the Google Earth image overlay shown above.

These data are pretty impressive, especially when viewed in tandem with the post-earthquake Google Earth images.  There appears to be misalignment between the lidar and the imagery, but that may have been introduced when I gridded and exported the data to Google Earth (there is no metadata associated with these file, only the coordinate info in the LAS header (UTM z18N)).

The GeoTIFF DEMs produced by NGA and available on the site are also interesting to look at.  Here is a 40 cm DEM overlain in Google Earth:

Download the KMZ file shown above.

Comparison of the LiDAR data above, acquired January 25th, with the Google Earth imagery which was presumably acquired in the days immediately after the earthquake, shows that there is now a set of large tents (field hospital?) in the middle of the athletic fields that isn’t present in the imagery.

It is unclear at this point how much of the data that NGA is collecting over Haiti will be made available to the public.  I hope that they intend release the full data set in an easy to access manner (e.g. all the DEMs, the las files, or both).  OpenTopography has been in contact with NGA and we’ve offered to host whatever portion of this data set they are willing to share with the scientific community and the general public.  Stay tuned.

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Haiti LiDAR

Posted on Fri, January 22, 2010 by Chris Crosby in 2010 Haiti EQ • Data • News

Recent reports indicate that there is LiDAR data being collected by a number of groups over Haiti in the wake of the 12 January magnitude 7.0 earthquake.  These data will potentially be powerful for earthquake relief workers and the scientific community, and should be an important geospatial resource in the recovery and rebuilding of Haiti.

This news article describes the work being done by the Naval Meteorology and Oceanography Command out of Stennis Space Center in Mississippi to acquire LiDAR around Haiti.  These collections are apparently hydrographic surveys of ports and other areas in Haiti using the CHARTS (Compact Hydrographic Airborne Rapid Total Survey) system.  More information about the CHARTS system and the National Coastal Mapping program is available here.

Today, a press release entitled, Rochester Institute of Technology Captures Haiti Disaster With High-Tech Imaging System; World Bank Funds Five-Day Mission, was issued that describes the data collection being conducted by a team out of RIT who are acquiring LiDAR, high-resolution color imagery, and thermal infrared data using a platform called WASP (Wildfire Airborne Sensor Program) designed to detect wildfires.  The press release provides quite a bit of information about the acquisition, data products, and logistics of the collection.  Specifically on the topic of the LiDAR data, the press release states:

The LIDAR capability detects and measures collapsed buildings and standing structures damaged by the earthquake. At the request of the U.S. Geological Survey, Faulring is using LIDAR to map the fault line to estimate how much the earth moved. This information is critical to refinement of earthquake-risk prediction models.

Application of these data to investigations of co-seismic ground rupture is logical and given the tropical vegetation in Haiti I would expect that the data may prove quite useful for locating and documenting surface rupture associated with the earthquake.  This is also a potentially interesting test case for application of LiDAR to post-earthquake scientific investigations, but is not the first time that airborne LiDAR has been collected immediately following an earthquake.  That honor goes to the LiDAR data collected following the 16 October 1999 Hector Mine, CA Earthquake and available for download here.

My understanding is that the RIT WASP data will made publicly available as soon as it has been processed.  At this time I don’t have specific information on how they intend to distribute the data products, but we’ve offered OpenTopography as a potential access point for the data if there is a need to host it someplace.  When we know more about how to access these data we’ll provide an update.

Finally, I understand that the scientific community has deployed at least one terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) instrument to Haiti for post-earthquake investigations.

UPDATE (January 24): Wired Science has a nice article with more information and preliminary images of the RIT LiDAR data discussed above:  New 3-D Aerial Images of Haiti Will Aid Recovery and Research

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