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Friday, May 04, 2007
Geosensing Systems Engineering Takes Delivery of a Next Generation Gemini Airborne Laser Mapping Unit
By Bill Carter, Ramesh Shrestha & Clint Slatton
Nearly a decade after becoming the first University research group in the world to purchase an airborne laser swath mapping(ALSM, also referred to as LiDAR) unit, Geosensing Systems Engineering (GSE) researchers recently took delivery of a second, next generation, instrument. The new "Gemini" unit, shown in figure 1, was manufactured by Optech Incorporated in Toronto, Canada, and the UF unit is the first off the assembly line. The new Gemini unit provides GSE faculty, staff, and graduate students with a unique opportunity to obtain hands-on experience, working with the most advanced commercially manufactured airborne laser ranging system in the world. ALSM is rapidly becoming the method-of-choice for the development of high resolution digital elevations models and contour maps essential to: research on the evolution of terrain resulting from long term erosion, storm damage, volcanic and seismic events, and plate motion; forestry; and governmental management functions, including response to natural catastrophic events, and terrorism.
UF researchers and colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley(UCB) jointly operate the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM), which collects ALSM observations for academic researchers selected by NSF through a peer review process. Since the founding of NCALM four years ago, the UF aircraft has criss-crossed the country, from Florida to Alaska, California to Maine, and points in between, collecting observations for 34 projects being conducted by researchers at 25 universities in 15 states. And the use of ALSM continues to expand, as evident by the recent request by the NSF Program Director, Antarctic Geology and Geophysics, Office of Polar Programs for NCALM to support research in Antarctica. (www.ncalm.org). In addition, a proposal is under review at NSF for NCALM to map areas in the Amazon region.
Beyond the busy slate of NCALM activities, UF researchers continue to collaborate with and assist governmental agencies in need of high quality ALSM observations, including the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Federal Park Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Defense.
Graduates from the GSE program enjoy career opportunities in academia, private industry, and government agencies. These opportunities are increasingly attracting talented graduate students. Currently there are 20 graduate students (16 PHD and 4 MS), including two Fulbright Scholars, in the Civil and Coastal Engineering and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments, who are using ALSM observations in their MS and PhD research.
State and federal agencies are poised to spend hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars on the collection of ALSM data over the next decade. In Florida, the legislature recently approved $29M for mapping coastal Florida in 2007. The UF is a member of a team headed by Dewberry and Davis Inc. that received the highest ranking at the technical review stage of the program. Two other teams also received satisfactory rankings and negotiations were in progress when this article was written.
At the federal level, at the request of the United States Congress,the National Academy of Sciences(NAS) investigated how Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should use ALSM observations to map the flood zones used to set flood insurance rates and for planning and providing assistance in response to flood events. GSE faculty member, Professor Ramesh Shrestha, served as a member of the NAS committee, and the report was released on January 31, 2007. The Committee concluded that the nation’s base map information for land surface elevation is inadequate to support FEMA’s Flood Map Modernization needs and that a new program called Elevation
for the Nation is needed. The report recommends:
1. Elevation for the Nation should employ Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) as the primary technology for digital elevation data acquisition. LiDAR is the technology most capable of producing the (bare-earth) elevation accuracy that meets FEMA’s requirements for national flood plain mapping in all terrain types.
2. A seamless nationwide elevation model produced with LiDAR has application beyond the FEMA Map Modernization program. As part of Elevation for the Nation, federal, state, and local mapping partners should have the option to request data that exceed minimum specifications if they pay the additional cost of data collection and processing required to achieve higher accuracies.
3. The new data collected in Elevation for the Nation should be disseminated to the public as part of an updated National Elevation Dataset.
4. The Elevation for the Nation database should contain the original LiDAR mass points and edited bare-earth surface, as well as any breaklines required to define essential linear features.
5. In addition to elements for the national database, secondary products including triangulated irregular networks, hydrologically corrected digital elevation models, and hydrologically corrected stream networks and shorelines should be created to support FEMA flood plain mapping with new standards and interchange formats.
Comprehensive standards for LiDAR data collection and processing are also needed. Professional societies and federal agency consortia are appropriate entities to lead development of these standards; funding to support these efforts should be considered as part of a nationwide effort. Also at the federal level, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is laying the ground work to update the height maps of the entire nation, using ALSM/LiDAR. And it appears that NSF may receive significant increases in funding for the application of ALSM to scientific research.
UF - Civil & Coastal Engineering
By Bill Carter, Ramesh Shrestha & Clint Slatton
Nearly a decade after becoming the first University research group in the world to purchase an airborne laser swath mapping(ALSM, also referred to as LiDAR) unit, Geosensing Systems Engineering (GSE) researchers recently took delivery of a second, next generation, instrument. The new "Gemini" unit, shown in figure 1, was manufactured by Optech Incorporated in Toronto, Canada, and the UF unit is the first off the assembly line. The new Gemini unit provides GSE faculty, staff, and graduate students with a unique opportunity to obtain hands-on experience, working with the most advanced commercially manufactured airborne laser ranging system in the world. ALSM is rapidly becoming the method-of-choice for the development of high resolution digital elevations models and contour maps essential to: research on the evolution of terrain resulting from long term erosion, storm damage, volcanic and seismic events, and plate motion; forestry; and governmental management functions, including response to natural catastrophic events, and terrorism.
UF researchers and colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley(UCB) jointly operate the National Science Foundation (NSF) National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM), which collects ALSM observations for academic researchers selected by NSF through a peer review process. Since the founding of NCALM four years ago, the UF aircraft has criss-crossed the country, from Florida to Alaska, California to Maine, and points in between, collecting observations for 34 projects being conducted by researchers at 25 universities in 15 states. And the use of ALSM continues to expand, as evident by the recent request by the NSF Program Director, Antarctic Geology and Geophysics, Office of Polar Programs for NCALM to support research in Antarctica. (www.ncalm.org). In addition, a proposal is under review at NSF for NCALM to map areas in the Amazon region.
Beyond the busy slate of NCALM activities, UF researchers continue to collaborate with and assist governmental agencies in need of high quality ALSM observations, including the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the Federal Park Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of the Interior, and the Department of Defense.
Graduates from the GSE program enjoy career opportunities in academia, private industry, and government agencies. These opportunities are increasingly attracting talented graduate students. Currently there are 20 graduate students (16 PHD and 4 MS), including two Fulbright Scholars, in the Civil and Coastal Engineering and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Departments, who are using ALSM observations in their MS and PhD research.
State and federal agencies are poised to spend hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of dollars on the collection of ALSM data over the next decade. In Florida, the legislature recently approved $29M for mapping coastal Florida in 2007. The UF is a member of a team headed by Dewberry and Davis Inc. that received the highest ranking at the technical review stage of the program. Two other teams also received satisfactory rankings and negotiations were in progress when this article was written.
At the federal level, at the request of the United States Congress,the National Academy of Sciences(NAS) investigated how Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) should use ALSM observations to map the flood zones used to set flood insurance rates and for planning and providing assistance in response to flood events. GSE faculty member, Professor Ramesh Shrestha, served as a member of the NAS committee, and the report was released on January 31, 2007. The Committee concluded that the nation’s base map information for land surface elevation is inadequate to support FEMA’s Flood Map Modernization needs and that a new program called Elevation
for the Nation is needed. The report recommends:
1. Elevation for the Nation should employ Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) as the primary technology for digital elevation data acquisition. LiDAR is the technology most capable of producing the (bare-earth) elevation accuracy that meets FEMA’s requirements for national flood plain mapping in all terrain types.
2. A seamless nationwide elevation model produced with LiDAR has application beyond the FEMA Map Modernization program. As part of Elevation for the Nation, federal, state, and local mapping partners should have the option to request data that exceed minimum specifications if they pay the additional cost of data collection and processing required to achieve higher accuracies.
3. The new data collected in Elevation for the Nation should be disseminated to the public as part of an updated National Elevation Dataset.
4. The Elevation for the Nation database should contain the original LiDAR mass points and edited bare-earth surface, as well as any breaklines required to define essential linear features.
5. In addition to elements for the national database, secondary products including triangulated irregular networks, hydrologically corrected digital elevation models, and hydrologically corrected stream networks and shorelines should be created to support FEMA flood plain mapping with new standards and interchange formats.
Comprehensive standards for LiDAR data collection and processing are also needed. Professional societies and federal agency consortia are appropriate entities to lead development of these standards; funding to support these efforts should be considered as part of a nationwide effort. Also at the federal level, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is laying the ground work to update the height maps of the entire nation, using ALSM/LiDAR. And it appears that NSF may receive significant increases in funding for the application of ALSM to scientific research.
UF - Civil & Coastal Engineering
# posted by J @ 1:45 PM 