Coastal Lidar BreakdownConcerns, Trends & Data Availability

Eric Morris

Northwest GIS User’s ConferenceOctober 16, 2014

Active System•Uses laser ranges, scan angle & positional IMU data to produce x,y,z and intensity for corresponding ground returns

Basics of Light Detection and Ranging

• Accuracies dependent on calibration and GPS base station

• Post-processing is costly• Collected, stored in “point

clouds”• ≥400,000 pulses/sec• ~a million data points

every 2.5 seconds.

Basics of Light Detection and Ranging

A (Brief) History of Lidar

• 1960s – lunar laser ranging (to aid Apollo landing)• 1977 – NOAA/NASA AOL looked to the clouds• 1993 – GPS & IMU allowed accurate airborne use• 2003 – ASPRS LAS 1.0 format (open source)• 2010 – National Enhanced Elevation Assessment (NEEA)

• 2012 – U.S. Interagency Elevation Inventory• 2014 – 3DEP • ~2020 – GEDI – worldwide canopy at 1 m

Concerns

Geodesy

Vertical & Horizontal Accuracy

RMSEZ & ρ

Raw Data Raw DEM

ASCII, LAS, LAZ, ZLAS

Raw Data

Evolution of Elevation Data

Evolution of Elevation Data

Evolution of Elevation Data

Evolution of Elevation Data

Point Cloud Elevation

Intensity

RGB encoded

Classified

Discrete Lidar Returns

DSM DTM

Bare-earth

Breaklines

1 meter Contours from 1 meter Lidar

Canopy

Why we need lidar

Lidar Applications

Slope StabilityOso, WA

White Oak, NC

Ag Practices

Cultural Preservation

Mobile Lidar

Colorado Spring, Co

Out there uses…

Coastal Lidar

Topobathy

Why Topobathy

Tampa Bay, FL

Why Topobathy

70 m

NOAA-NGS Post-Sandy Atlantic Seaboard Mapping

Project

Avalon, NJ

Airborne Lidar Bathymetry (ALB)

• Applicable to oceans, rivers, lakes

• Tides

• Snell’s Law

• Water Clarity

• Eye safety

• Air Space

• Refraction

“Requires more everything”

Tampa Bay, FL

Geoarchaeology

Pago Pago, American Samoa

Coastal Zone Management

Great South Bay, Long Island, NY

Shoreline Delineation

Ocracoke, NC

Beach Erosion

Natural Disaster

Assessments

Fire Island, NY

Willapa, WA

Trends

1995 - 2000

2001 - 2003

2004 - 2006

2007 - 2009

2010 - 2012

2013 - 2015

2013 – 2015Caribbean, Hawaii, Alaska

Planned/Funded or In-Progress

TopobathymetricLidar

Completed ALB

ALB

Great Lakes

ALB

West &East

Coasts

ALBSoutheast

& Gulf Coast

HawaiiPuerto Rico

USVIALB

ALBPlanned

Data Availability

Data Availability

Data Availability

www.coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast/

Kirk Waters, PhD, Applied Sciences, NOAA OCM

Amar Nayegandhi, Director of Remote Sensing, Dewberry

Chris Parrish, PhD, formerly of the NOAA NGS and NOAA CCOM-JHC, now at Oregon State Univ.’s School of

Civil and Construction Engineering

Special Thanks and Acknowledgements

www.coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast

Eric L. MorrisEric.Morris@NOAA.gov

Questions?