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first published week of: 05/22/2017
Using Global Mapper‘s Path Profile tool to precisely digitize the edge of a curb from terrestrial LiDAR data.
The availability of LiDAR data is expanding at a rate that is out-pacing the requisite knowledge and skills needed to effectively utilize the data. Sounds like a cart-before-the-horse analogy, to coin an idiom from a bygone era.
This conundrum first came to our attention a couple of years ago when, during a roundtable discussion at a GIS forum in one of our neighboring New England states, a local government official excitedly announced that her town had just received LiDAR (or leader, to use her exact pronunciation) from the state. She went on to confide that she wasn’t entirely sure what LiDAR was but evidently that did not dampen her excitement. Remarkably, several other forum delegates jumped on the bandwagon, to use another obsolete transportation-based analogy, and shared their enthusiasm at having received data for their town while eagerly awaiting instructions from the same state agency on what to do next.
In the months that followed, it became clear that LiDAR illiteracy is not unique to small-town New England. Many GIS agencies and departments in other states, provinces, and regions throughout the world, recognizing the increased accessibility of point cloud collection technology, have proactively embarked on massive data collection projects. As a means to justify the expense of these projects, the agencies will often provide the fruits of their endeavor to eager and yet uninformed constituents and office bearers.
The aforementioned municipal officials were certainly justified in their excitement; LiDAR data is contributing to a fundamental change in how we perceive our world. Traditional mapping practices have considered the planet from an inherently unrealistic, top-down perspective. With the emergence of 3D data formats, we are now able to develop a more realistic view allowing us to interact with our data in an immersive environment and providing the impetus for the development of new cartographic and analysis techniques. Read full story at blog.bluemarblegeo.com…