OpenTopography Blog

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

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Category: News

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LiDAR Textbook Available

Posted on Mon, March 23, 2009 by Chris Crosby in News • Resources

A new textbook, Topographic Laser Ranging and Scanning, co-edited by Jie Shan and Charles K Toth is now available.  It is apparently the first textbook to tackle the topic of topographic LiDAR technology and processing.  Book summary:

This volume provides the first systematic, yet in-depth, introduction to the basic theories and principles of LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology and data processing, which over the past decade has been successfully used for topographic mapping and 3-D visualization. The information collected in these pages meets the needs of all those working across the many fields LiDAR is impacting, including electrical engineering, signal processing, navigation theory, pattern recognition, and machine learning. Edited by leading experts with broad backgrounds in LiDAR topographic mapping and written by highly regarded specialists, it expands the toolboxes of researchers with novel ideas beyond their own experience.

I don’t have a copy of the book, but based on the Google Books preview it seems like it could be an excellent resource for people trying to get up to speed on LiDAR topography.

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NCALM Data Distribution Center wins Google KML in Research Contest

Posted on Tue, March 10, 2009 by Chris Crosby in Data • News

Yesterday Google announced the winners of their KML in Research contest via the Google LatLong blog.  Ionut Iordache, of the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) at UC Berkeley was awarded for his very nice NCALM Data Distribution Center KML file that allows integrated access to tiled LIDAR DEMs as well as hillshade overlays in Google Earth.  Google Earth provides an excellent platform to visualize and then download LIDAR-derived topography and the NCALM DDC KML is an nice example of how a lot of functionality can be bundled into a small, easily-downloadable, KML.  The Google Earth files available via OpenTopograph.org/kml offer similar capabilities as the NCALM DDC file, but for a variety of reasons we have chosen not to integrate them into a single download like the file produced by Ionut.

A full list of winners in the KML in Research contest can be found here.  Congratulations to Ionut and NCALM!

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NCALM releases Google Earth-based LIDAR Data Distribution Center

Posted on Mon, November 17, 2008 by Chris Crosby in Data • News • Resources

Today, Ionut Iordache announced the release of NCALM‘s new Google Earth-based LiDAR Data Distribution Center.  This new system is much improved over NCALM’s former means of distributing their public datasets and is likely to be very popular and successful.  Via a simple KML file downloaded from the DDC webpage, users can access footprints showing the extent of all datasets currently available, metadata, links to download standard digital elevation model products, and hillshade overlays that can be viewed directly in Google Earth.

I am currently working with Ionut to provide an overview of NCALM data on the OpenTopography Data Overview map as well as links to download the NCALM file directly from OpenTopography.  This collaboration will be the first step towards bring together access to the various public domain LiDAR topography data via the OpenTopography Portal.

Full email announcement:

We are pleased to announce the upgrade of NCALM’s Data Distribution Center (DDC) to a new Google Earth-based interface that will allow you faster and better access to all of our public LiDAR datasets.

This new interface, developed by NCALM at UC Berkeley, gives you the opportunity to explore our LiDAR datasets before making any download by visualizing the full resolution (1m) shaded relief maps on-the-fly as Google Earth geo-rectified image overlays (both the bare-earth as well as the “unfiltered” shaded relief maps, where available).

The compressed (zip) data tiles are provided in ArcInfo raster format and can be downloaded by visually selecting the tile footprint in Google Earth or batch downloaded for an entire project by accessing a special page (that lists all available data files) and using your favorite download manager program.

The DDC KML file can be stored on your computer for off-line browsing and accessing the meta-data.

You can access the Google Earth KML file and a short tutorial on how to use the interface at this URL:

http://ncalm.berkeley.edu
Check back soon on our DDC KML as we’re in the process of publishing more public LiDAR datasets from NCALM’s 2007 campaign as well as NSF seed money student projects.

PS: I apologize in advance if you receive this message multiple times.

Best Regards,
Ionut Iordache

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Airborne and terrestrial LiDAR coordination for The Great Southern California ShakeOut

Posted on Thu, November 13, 2008 by Chris Crosby in News • TLS

Today at 10 am The Great Southern California ShakeOut staged an Mw=7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault to raise public awareness of earthquake hazards and to allow public responders and the scientific community to practice their response to such an event.  As part of the scientific response, UNAVCO is coordinating community equipment deployment and data acquisition activities via their Great Southern California ShakeOut Response discussion forum.  A sub-forum, coordinated by David Phillips, is tracking the airborne and terrestrial LiDAR response to the earthquake.  As of 12:23 pm (CA time), TLS resources from University of New Mexico LiDAR Lab and NCALM are availble to respond to the event.  NCALM and UT Austin Center for Space Research have also confirmed that they could respond with airborne scanners and aircraft.

LiDAR acquisition immediately following a large, ground-rupturing earthquake on the San Andreas system, will be of great importance to preserve slip distribution, offset features and to provide a post-earthquake snap-shot of the landscape that could then be differenced with the recently acquired B4 or GeoEarthScope LiDAR topography datasets to provide information about near-field deformation along the fault rupture.

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Call for NCALM Seed Proposals

Posted on Mon, October 20, 2008 by Chris Crosby in News

The National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping has issued their annual call for Seed Proposals from graduate students.

The National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) invites graduate students who are interested in research grade ALSM data to make use of the center’s facilities through the Seed Money Projects programme. This year the program will fund 10 seed projects covering area no more than 40 sq. km. each.The motivation for such seed projects is to have graduate students start their preliminary scientific research and subsequently develop larger NSF proposals to make scientific discoveries using observations and data sets from ALSM technology.

The deadline for proposals is October 31st November 10.  More information is available at the NCALM Seed Proposal website

UPDATE (10/27 GilbertClub email):

We have increased our funding number to 10, so there will be greater opportunity than in past years.

In 2009, NCALM will be flying on the island of Hawaii, so for this seed proposal announcement cycle we will welcome requests for
Hawaii.

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New SRTM DEM Version Available

Posted on Wed, October 01, 2008 by Chris Crosby in Data • News

Ramon Arrowsmith points out that CGIAR-CSI has released a new version (v.4) of their 90m SRTM Digital Elevation Data.

The SRTM data now available from this site has been upgraded to version 4. This latest version represents a significant improvement from previous versions, using new interpolation algorithms and better auxiliary dems. We are confident this is now the highest quality SRTM dataset available.

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Welcome to the OpenTopography Blog

Posted on Fri, September 19, 2008 by viswanat in News

Welcome to the OpenTopgraphy Blog.  We plan to use this blog as a way to communicate project developments, system updates, and to address questions and issues that may arise.  At this time the OpenTopography Portal is operating as a beta system - If you encounter problems or have comments or suggestions for improvements, please let us know either in the forum or via our feedback form

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