OpenTopography

OTforge: OpenTopography Open Source Software

OTforge is an OpenTopography administered space on sourceforge.net that serves as a repository for open source software developed by our project.  OTforge is also available to host software developed by our partners and the Earth science user community.

Software Currently Available via OTforge:

Points2Grid - Points2Grid is a robust and scalable tool for gridding LIDAR point cloud data to generate Digital Elevation Models (DEM). Points2Grid uses a local gridding method to compute grid cell elevation using a neighborhood defined around each cell based on a search radius provided by the user.  More information about the algorithm and software is available on our Points2Grid page.

Related Open Source Software Projects

The OpenTopography system is largely built on open source software, including code from the projects listed below.  For more information on the OT cyberinfrastructure system see our system architecture and publications.

Opal Toolkit - A toolkit for wrapping scientific applications as Web services developed at San Diego Supercomputer Center (where OpenTopography is also based).  Provides features such as scheduling, standards-based Grid security and data management in an easy-to-use and configurable manner.  OpenTopography’s Web service architecture is built with Opal services, and we leverage many of the features provided by the toolkit.

libLAS - libLAS is a C/C++ library for reading and writing the LAS LiDAR format.  OT uses the libLAS libraries for various data preparation, query, and processing tasks.

GDAL - The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL), is a translator library for raster geospatial data formats.  OpenTopography uses GDAL for DEM format conversion and derived product generation.