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LIDAR Mapping and Analysis Systems: A GIS-based Software Tool for LIDAR Data Processing
 Raul Abdul Rauf Campos-Marquetti Senior Scientist, EnerQuest Systems, LLC 7600 Jefferson Street, NE, Courtyard II, Suite 101 Albuquerque, New Mexico USA, 87109 Tel: 505.828.2700, Fax: 505.828.9200 Email: rcampos@enerquestnm.com Abstract The emergence of airborne LIDAR technologies has resulted in the ability to generate very high-resolution terrain elevation maps of the earth’s surface. The advantages to this data are that for the first time we can create true-3D maps of the terrain and their associated surface features (bare-earth surface, trees, buildings, stream networks, etc.). The primary bottleneck in the use of this data has been the nature of the data itself. Airborne laser altimeters collect hundreds of millions of elevation points that need to be formatted, imported and processed in an efficient manner. LIDAR data has strained the limits of COTS Commercial Off-the-Shelf software, especially within a production environment. This has lead to the US Army Corps of Engineers to release an SBIR Small Business Innovation Research program, which EnerQuest Systems, has replied to and has been working on for the last 2 years. The cumulative product of this work is the LIDAR Mapping and Analysis System (LID-MAS). This paper will discuss the functionality and efficiencies of the LID-MAS software, which is built upon a suite of GIS, image processing and database management tools. |