Category Archives: LASmoons

LASmoons: Olumese Efeovbokhan

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Olumese Efeovbokhan (recipient of another three LASmoons)
Geosciences, School of Geography
University of Nottingham, UK

Background:
Hydrological models require various input data for flood vulnerability mapping. An important input data for flood vulnerability mapping is the DTM over which flow is being routed. DTMs are generated using cartography, ground surveying, digital aerial photogrammetry, interferometric SAR (InSAR), LiDAR amongst other means. The accuracy of high resolution DTMs minimize errors that may emanate from input data when conducting hydrological modelling, especially in small built-up catchment areas. This research involves the application of digital aerial photogrammetry to generate point clouds which can subsequently be utilized for flood vulnerability mapping.

photogrammetry point cloud
photogrammetic DSM

Goal:
To consolidate on previous gains in using LAStools to generate DTMs required for flood vulnerability mapping. The suitability of these DTMs will be subsequently validated for flood vulnerability analysis. These results will be compared with other DTMs in order to determine the uncertainty associated with the use of such DTMs for flood vulnerability mapping.

photogrammetry point cloud
photogrammetric DSM

Data:
+ high-resolution photogrammetry point cloud and DSM for Lagos Island, Ikorodu and Ajah Nigeria
– – – imagery obtained with an Ebee Sensefly drone flight
– – – photogrammetry point cloud generated with Photoscan by AgiSoft 
+ rainfall data
+ classified LiDAR point cloud with a resolution of 1 pulse per square meter obtained for the study area from the Lagos State Government

Photogrammetry point cloud
Photogrammetric DSM

LAStools processing:
1) tile large photogrammetry point cloud into tiles with buffer [lastile]
2) mark set of points whose z coordinate is a certain percentile of that of their neighbors [lasthin]
3) remove isolated low points from the set of marked points [lasnoise]
4) classify marked points into ground and non-ground [lasground]
5) pull in points close above and below the ground [lasheight]
6) create Digital Terrain Model (DTM) from ground points [las2dem]
7) merge and hillshade individual raster DTMs [blast2dem]

LASmoons: Leonidas Alagialoglou

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Leonidas Alagialoglou (recipient of three LASmoons)
Multimedia Understanding Group, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki, GREECE

Background:
Canopy height is a fundamental geometric tree parameter in supporting sustainable forest management. Apart from the standard height measurement method using LiDAR instruments, other airborne measurement techniques, such as very high-resolution passive airborne imaging, have also shown to provide accurate estimations. However, both methods suffer from high cost and cannot be regularly repeated.

Preliminary results of predicted CHE based on multi-temporal satellite images against ground-truth LiDAR measurements. The 3rd column depicts pixel-wise absolute error of prediction. Last column depicts pixel-wise uncertainty estimation of the prediction (in means of 3 standard deviations).

Goal:
In our study, we attempt to substitute airborne measurements with widely available satellite imagery. In addition to spatial and spectral correlations of a single-shot image, we seek to exploit temporal correlations of sequential lower resolution imagery. For this we use a convolutional variant of a recurrent neural network based model for estimating canopy height, based on a temporal sequence of Sentinel-2 images. Our model’s performance using sequential space borne imagery is shown to outperform the compared state-of-the-art methods based on costly airborne single-shot images as well as satellite images.

Digital Terrain Model of a part of the study area

Data:
The experimental study area of approximately 940 squared km is includes two national parks, Bavarian Forest National Park and Šumava National Park, which are located at the border between Germany and Czech Republic. LiDAR measurements of the area from 2017 and 2019 will be used as ground truth height measurements that have been provided by the national park’s authorities. Temporal sequences of Sentinel-2 imagery will be acquired from the Copernicus hub for canopy height estimation.

LAStools processing:
Accurate conversion of LAS files into DEM and DSM in order to acquire ground truth canopy height model.
1) Remove noise [lasthin, lasnoise]
2) Classify points into ground and non-ground [lasground, lasground_new]
3) Create DTMs and DSMs [lasthin, las2dem]

LASmoons: Zak Kus

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Zak Kus (recipient of three LASmoons)
Topology Enthusiast
San Francisco, USA

Background:
While LiDAR data enables a lot of research and innovation in a lot of fields, it can also be used to create unique and visceral art. Using the high resolution data available, a 3D printer, and a long tool chain, we can create a physical, 3D topological map of the San Francisco bay area that shows off both the city’s hilly geology, and its unique skyline.

lasmoons_zak_kus_0

Test print of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

lasmoons_zak_kus_1

Test print of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Goal:
The ultimate goal of this project is to create an accurate, unique physical map of San Francisco, and the surrounding areas, which will be given to a loved one as a birthday gift. Using the data from the 2010 ARRA-CA GoldenGate survey, we can filter and process the raw lidar data into a DEM format using LAStools, which can be converted using a python script into a “water tight” 3D printable STL file.

While the data works fairly well out of the box, it does require a lot of manual editing, to remove noise spikes, and to delineate the coast line from the water in low lng areas. Interestingly, while many sophisticated tools exist to edit STLs that could in theory be used to clean up and prepare the files at the STL stage, few are capable of even opening files with so much detailed data. Using LAStools to manually classify, and remove unwanted data is the only way to achieve the desired level of detail in the final piece.

Data:
+ LiDAR data provided through USGS OpenTopography, using the ARRA-CA GoldenGate 2010 survey
+ Average point density of 3.33 pts/m^2 (though denser around SF)
+ Covers 2638 km^2 in total (only a ~100 km^2 subset is used)

LAStools processing:
1) Remove noise [lasnoise]
2) Manually clean up shorelines and problematic structures [lasview, laslayers]
3) Combine multiple tiles (to fit 3d printer) [lasmerge]
4) Create DEMs (asc format) for external tool to process [las2dem]

LASmoons: Martin Romain

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Martin Romain (recipient of three LASmoons)
Marshall Islands Conservation Society
Majuro, Republic of the MARSHALL ISLANDS

Background:
As a low-lying coastal nation, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) is at the forefront of exposure to climate change impacts. RMI has a strong dependence on natural resources and biodiversity not only for food and income but also for culture and livelihood. However, these resources are threatened by rising sea levels and associated coastal hazards (king tides, storm surges, wave run-up, saltwater intrusion, erosion). This project aims at addressing the lack of technical capacity and available data to implement effective risk reduction and adaptation measures, with a particular focus on inundation mapping and local evacuation planning in population centers.

DCIM100MEDIADJI_0507.JPG

Typical low-lying coastal area of the Republic of the Marshall

Goal:
This project intends to use LAStools to generate a DEM of the inhabited sections of 3 remote atolls (Aur, Ebon, Likiep) and 1 island (Mejit). The resulting DEM will be used to produce an inundation exposure model (and map) under variable sea level rise projections for each site. The ultimate goal is to integrate the results into each site’s disaster risk reduction strategy (long-term outcome) and present it through community consultations in schools, community centers, and council houses.

Data:
+ Aerial imagery of 11.5 square kilometers of land (6.3% of total national landmass) using DJI Matrice 200 V2 & DJI Zenmuse X5S with a minimum overlap of 75/75 and maximum altitude of 120m.

LAStools processing:
1) tile large point cloud into tiles with buffer [lastile]
2) remove noise points [lasthin, lasnoise]
3) classify points into ground and non-ground [lasground]
4) create Digital Terrain Models and Digital Surface Models [lasthin, las2dem]

Potential LAStools pipelines:
1) Removing Excessive Low Noise from Dense-Matching Point Clouds
2) Digital Pothole Removal: Clean Road Surface from Noisy Pix4D Point Cloud
3) Creating DTMs from dense-matched points of UAV imagery from SenseFly’s eBee

LASmoons: Volga Lipwoni

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Volga Lipwoni (recipient of three LASmoons)
Department of Geography, School of Earth and Environment
University of Canterbury, NEW ZEALAND

Background:
Structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry, has emerged as an effective tool to accurately extract three-dimensional (3D) structures from a series of overlapping two-dimensional (2D) Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) images. The bid to switch from the current labour-intensive, and time consuming forestry inventory practices has seen a lot of interest geared towards understanding the use of SfM photogrammetry to derive forest metrics (Iglhaut et al., 2019). There are a range of commercial, free and open source SfM photogrammetric software packages that can be used to process UAV images into 3D point clouds. Selection of the most appropriate package has become an important issue for most projects (Turner, Lucieer, & Wallace, 2013). A comparison of software performance in terms of accuracy, processing times and related costs would help foresters in deciding the best tool for the job.

lasmoons_Volga_Lipwoni

Typical point cloud derived with SfM software from UAV imagery.

Goal:
The study will generate 3D point clouds of images of a young forest trial and LAStools will be used to derive canopy height models (CHM) for computing tree heights. Tree heights from LiDAR data will serve as a baseline for accuracy assessment of heights derived from the point clouds.

Data:
+ 422 UAV images processed into 3D point clouds using ten (10) different commercial and open source SfM software packages

LAStools processing:
1) tile large point cloud into tiles with buffer [lastile]
2) remove noise points [lasthin, lasnoise]
3) classify points into ground and non-ground [lasground]
4) create Digital Terrain Modelsand Digital Surface Models [lasthin, las2dem]
5) produce Canopy Height Models for computing tree heights [lasheight, las2dem]

References:
Iglhaut, J., Cabo, C., Puliti, S., Piermattei, L., O’Connor, J., & Rosette, J. (2019). Structure from motion photogrammetry in forestry: A review. Current Forestry Reports, 5(3), 155-168. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s40725-019-00094-3
Turner, D., Lucieer, A., & Wallace, L. (2013). Direct georeferencing of ultrahigh-resolution UAV imagery. EEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, 52(5), 2738-2745. doi:10.1109/TGRS.2013.2265295

LASmoons: Gabriele Garnero

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Gabriele Garnero (recipient of three LASmoons)
Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning
Politecnico e Università degli Studi, Torino
ITALY

Background:
Last spring, the LARTU research group produced a laser scanner survey of the Abbey of Sant’Andrea in Vercelli, on the occasion of the VIII centenary of the dedication (1219). The database produced with a topographic tool that integrates the potential of a total station with laser scanner and photogrammetric sensors (Trimble SX 10), has been used to produce representations that can be consulted in interactive mode, navigating within the point clouds and producing a consultation platform that can also be accessed by non-specialist users such as art historians or archaeologists.

lasmoons_gabriele_garnero_0

Goal:
The LAStools software will be used to improve both the point cloud produced by eliminating the remaining noises, and check other ways of publishing the data, so as to make it usable from outside, to the community of researchers.

Data:
+ laser scanner and photogrammetric acquisitions of the interior of the building (150 millions of points)
+ laser scanner and photogrammetric acquisitions of the outside of the building (210 millions of points)
+ drone-based shooting of outdoor areas processed with Pix4D (23 millions of points)

LAStools processing:
1) tile large point cloud into tiles with buffer [lastile]
2) mark set of points whose z coordinate is a certain percentile of that of their neighbors [lasthin]
3) remove isolated low points from the set of marked points [lasnoise]
4) classify marked points into ground and non-ground [lasground]
5) creates a LiDAR portal for 3D visualization of LAS files [laspublish]

LASmoons: Nicolas Barth

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Nicolas Barth (recipient of three LASmoons)
Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences
University of California, Riverside
UNITED STATES

Background:
The 850 km-long Alpine Fault (AF) is one of the world’s great laterally-slipping active faults (like California’s San Andreas Fault), which currently accommodates about 80% of the motion between the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates in the South Island of New Zealand (NZ). Well-dated sedimentary layers preserved in swamps and lakes adjacent to the AF currently provide one of the world’s most spatially and temporally complete record of large ground rupturing earthquakes (Howarth et al., 2018). Importantly these records reveal that major earthquakes occur with greater regularity on the AF than any other known fault, releasing a Magnitude (Mw) 7 to 8 earthquake on average every 249 ± 58 years and that the most recent earthquake was around Mw 8 in 1717 AD prior to European arrival. This computes to a conditional probability of 69% that the AF will rupture in the next 50 years. For a country that has recently had several notable earthquakes (e.g. 2010 Mw 7.1 Canterbury, 2016 Mw 7.8 Kaikoura) and has an economy heavily reliant on tourism, the next AF earthquake is the one NZ is trying to prepare for (note that a Mw 8 earthquake is about thirty times the energy release of a Mw 7).

The more data we can gather as scientists to constrain (1) the magnitude of the next AF earthquake, (2) the amount of lateral and vertical slip (offset roads, powerlines, etc.), (3) the coseismic effects (ground shaking, landslides, liquefaction), and (4) the duration it takes the landscape to recover (muddy rivers, increased sediment supply, prolonged landsliding), the more we can anticipate expected hazards and foster societal resilience.

Despite its name, the AF is almost completely obscured beneath a dense temperate rain-forest canopy, which has hindered fine-scale geomorphic studies. Relatively low quality airborne LiDAR (2 m-resolution bare-earth model) was first collected in 2010 for a 32 km-length of the central AF. Despite being the best studied portion of the AF, 82 % of the fault traces identified in the LiDAR were previously unmapped (Barth et al., 2012). The LiDAR reveals the width and style of ground deformation. Interpretation of the bare-earth landscape in combination with on the ground sampling, allows single earthquake displacements, uplift rates, recurrence of landslides, and post-earthquake sedimentation rates to be quantified. A new 2019 airborne LiDAR dataset collected along 230 km-length of the southern AF has great potential to improve our understanding of this relatively “well-behaved” fault system, what to expect from its next earthquake, and to give us insight into considerably more complex fault systems like the San Andreas.

(A) Aerial view of the South Island of New Zealand highlighting the boundary between the Pacific and Australian plates (white) and the Alpine Fault in particular (red). (B) View showing the extent of the 2019 airborne LiDAR survey to be processed by this lasmoons proposal. (C) Aerial imagery over Franz Josef, site of a 2010 airborne LiDAR survey. (D) 2010 Franz Josef LiDAR DTM hillshade (GNS Science). LiDAR has revolutionized our ability to map fault offsets and other earthquake ground deformation beneath this dense temperate rainforest.

Goal:
The LAStools software will be used to check the quality of the data (reclassing ground points and removing any low ground classed outliers if needed) and create a seamless digital terrain model (DTM) from the 1695 tiled LAS files provided. The DTM will be used to create derivative products including contours, slope map, aspect map, single direction B&W hillshades, multi-directional hillshades, and slope-colored hillshades to interpret the fault and landslide related landscape features hidden beneath the dense temperate rain-forest. The results will be used as seed data to seek national-level science funding to field verify interpretations and collect samples to determine ages of features (geochronology). The ultimate goal is to improve our understanding of the Alpine Fault prior to its next major earthquake and to communicate those findings effectively through publications in open access peer-reviewed journal articles and meetings with NZ regional councils.

Data:
+ airborne LiDAR survey collected in 2019 using a Riegl LSM-Q780 sensor by AAM New Zealand
+ provided data are as 1695 LAS files organized into 500 m x 500 m tiles and classified as ground and non-ground points (75 pts/m2 or ~0.8 ground-classed pts/m2; 320 GB total)

LAStools processing:
1) check the quality of the ALS data [lasinfo, lasoverlap, lasgrid]
2) [if needed] remove any low and high ground-classed outliers [lasnoise]
3) [if needed] reclassify ground and non-ground points [lasground]
4) create Digital Terrain Model (DTM) from ground points [blast2dem]

References:
Howarth, J.D., Cochran, U.A., Langridge, R.M., Clark, K.J., Fitzsimons, S.J., Berryman, K.R., Villamor, P., Strong, D.T. (2018) Past large earthquakes on the Alpine Fault: paleosismological progress and future directions. New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics, v. 61, 309-328, doi: 10.1080/00288306.2018.1465658
Barth, N.C., Toy, V.G., Langridge, R.M., Norris, R.J. (2012) Scale dependence of oblique plate-boundary partitioning: new insights from LiDAR, central Alpine Fault, New Zealand. Lithosphere 4(5), 435-448, doi: 10.1130/L201.1

LASmoons: Olumese Efeovbokhan

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Olumese Efeovbokhan (recipient of three LASmoons)
Geosciences, School of Geography
University of Nottingham, UK

Background:
One of the vital requirements to successfully drive and justify favorable flood risk management policies is the availability of reliable data for hydrological modelling. Unfortunately, this poses a big challenge in data-sparse regions and has resulted in uncoordinated and ineffective flood risk management policies with some areas left at the mercy of the floods they are exposed to. This research is focused on the ability to successfully generate data required for hydrological modelling using affordable and easy-to-replicate methods. The research will utilize unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for the generation of bare earth models (DTMs) from photogrammetry points, which will be subsequently used for flood vulnerability mapping.

Photogrammetry point cloud of Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos Island, Nigeria

Goal:
Generate a bare earth model using a combination of Agisoft Photoscan and LAStools and then validate its suitability for hydrological modelling. Should the generated model prove to be suitable we will use it to conduct flood sensitivity analysis and inundation modelling in other data-sparse regions using high resolution bare earth models generated the same way.

Data:
+ high-resolution photogrammetry point cloud for a portion of the study area
– – – imagery obtained with an Ebee Sensefly drone flight
– – – photogrammetry point cloud generated with Photoscan by AgiSoft 
+ classified LiDAR point cloud with a resolution of 1 pulse per square meter obtained for the study area from the Lagos State Government

LAStools processing:
1) tile large photogrammetry point cloud into tiles with buffer [lastile]
2) mark set of points whose z coordinate is a certain percentile of that of their neighbors [lasthin]
3) remove isolated low points from the set of marked points [lasnoise]
4) classify marked points into ground and non-ground [lasground]
5) pull in points close above and below the ground [lasheight]
6) create Digital Terrain Model (DTM) from ground points [las2dem]
7) merge and hillshade individual raster DTMs [blast2dem]

LASmoons: David Bandrowski

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David Bandrowski (recipient of three LASmoons)
Yurok Tribe
Native American Indian Tribe in Northern California, USA

Background:
Wild spring-run Chinook salmon populations on the South Fork Trinity River in Northern California are near the brink of extinction. The South Fork Trinity River is the most remote and the largest un-dammed river in the State of California, federally designated as a wild and scenic river, and is a keystone watershed within the Klamath River basin supporting one of the last remaining populations of wild spring-run Chinook salmon. Ecosystem restoration is urgently needed to improve watershed health in the face of climate change, land use, and water diversions. This drastic decline of the wild salmon species motivated the Yurok Tribe and its partners to take action and implement this project as a last opportunity to save this species before extinction. Spring-run Chinook are extremely important for the Yurok people culturally, spiritually, and for a subsistence food source.

sample of the available photogrammetry data

Goal:
Due to budgetary constraints, airborne LiDAR is not available; therefore the Yurok Tribe has been using aerial drones and Structure for Motion (SfM) photogrammetry to develop DTM models that can be used in determining available salmon habitat and to develop prioritized locations for restoration. The watershed has extremely heavy vegetation, and obtaining bare-earth surfaces for hydraulic modeling is difficult without the proper tools. The goal is to use LAStools to further restoration science and create efficient workflows for DTM development.

Data:
+ length of river mapped: 8 Kilometers
+ number of points: 150,856,819
+ horizontal datum: North American Datum 83 – California State Plane – Zone 1 (usft)
+ vertical datum: North American Vertical Datum 88

LAStools processing:
1) data quality checking [lasinfo, lasview, lasgrid]
2) classify ground and non-ground points [lasground and lasground_new]
3) remove low and high outliers [lasheight, lasnoise]
4) create DTM tiles at appropriate resolution [las2dem]
5) create a normalized point cloud [lasheight]

LASmoons: Sebastian Flachmeier

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Sebastian Flachmeier (recipient of three LASmoons)
UniGIS Master of Science, University of Salzburg, AUSTRIA
Bavarian Forest National Park, administration, Grafenau, GERMANY

Background:
The Bavarian Forest National Park is located in South-Eastern Germany, along the border with the Czech Republic. It has a total area of 240 km² and its elevation ranges from 600 to 1453 m. In 2002 a project called “High-Tech-Offensive Bayern” was started and a few first/last return LiDAR transects were flown to compute some forest metrics. The results showed that LiDAR has an advantage over other methods, because the laser was able to get readings from below the canopy. New full waveform scanner were developed that produced many more returns in the lower canopy. The National Park experimented with this technology in several projects and improved their algorithms for single tree detection. In 2012 the whole park was flown with full waveform and strategies for LiDAR based forest inventory for the whole National Park were developed. This is the data that is used in the following workflow description.

The whole Bavarian Forest National Park (black line), 1000 meter tiles (black dotted lines), the coverage of the recovered flight lines (light blue). In the area marked yellow within the red frame there are gaps in some of the flightlines. The corresponding imagery in Google Earth shows that this area contains a water reservoir.

Goal:
Several versions of the LiDAR existed on the server of the administration that didn’t have the attributes we needed to reconstruct the original flight lines. The number of returns per pulse, the flight line IDs, and the GPS time stamps were missing. The goal was a workflow to create a LAStools workflow to convert the LiDAR from the original ASCII text files provided by the flight company into LAS or compressed LAZ files with all fields properly populated.

Data:
+ ALS data flown in 2012 by Milan Geoservice GmbH 650 m above ground with overlap.
+ full waveform sensor (RIEGL 560 / Q680i S) with up to 7 returns per shot
+ total of 11.080.835.164 returns
+ in 1102 ASCII files with *.asc extension (changed to *.txt to avoid confusion with ASC raster)
+ covered area of 1.25 kilometers
+ last return density of 17.37 returns per square meter

This data is provided by the administration of Bavarian Forest National Park. The workflow was part of a Master’s thesis to get the academic degree UniGIS Master of Science at the University of Salzburg.

LAStools processing:

The LiDAR was provided as 1102 ASCII text files named ‘spur000001.txt’ to ‘spur001102.txt’ that looked like this:

more spur000001.txt
4589319.747 5436773.357 685.837 49 106 1 215248.851500
4589320.051 5436773.751 683.155 46 24 2 215248.851500
4589320.101 5436773.772 686.183 66 87 1 215248.851503
[…]

Positions 1 to 3 store the x, y, and z coordinate in meter [m]. Position 4 stores the “echo width” in 0.1 nanoseconds [ns], position 5 stores the intensity, position 6 stores the return number, position 7 stores the GPS time stamp in seconds [s] of the current GPS week. The “number of returns (of given pulse)” information is not explicitly stored and will need to be reconstructed in order, for example, to identify which returns are last returns. The conversion from ASCII text to LAZ was done with the txt2las command line shown below that incorporates these rationals:

  • Although the ASCII files list the three coordinates with millimeter resolution (three decimal digits), we store only centimeter resolution which is sufficient to capture all the precision in a typical airborne LiDAR survey.
  • After computing histograms of the “return number” and the “echo width” for all points with lasinfo and determining their maximal ranges it was decided to use point type 1 which can store up to 7 returns per shot and store the “echo width” as an additional attribute of type 3 (“unsigned short”) using “extra bytes”.
  • The conversion from GPS time stamp in GPS week time to Adjusted Standard time was done by finding out the exact week during which Milan Geoservice GmbH carried out the survey and looking up the corresponding GPS week 1698 using this online GPS time calculator.
  • Information about the Coordinate Reference System “DHDN / 3-degree Gauss-Kruger zone 4” as reported in the meta data is added in form of EPSG code 31468 to each LAS file.
txt2las -i ascii\spur*.txt ^
        -parse xyz0irt ^
        -set_scale 0.01 0.01 0.01 ^
        -week_to_adjusted 1698 ^
        -add_attribute 3 "echo width" "of returning waveform [ns]" 0.1 0 0.1 ^
        -epsg 31468 ^
        -odir spur_raw -olaz ^
        -cores 4

The 1102 ASCII files are now 1102 LAZ files. Because we switched from GPS week time to Adjusted Standard GPS time stamps we also need to set the “global encoding” flag in the LAS header from 0 to 1 (see ASPRS LAS specification). We can do this in-place (i.e. without creating another set of files) using the following lasinfo command:

lasinfo -i spur_raw\spur*.laz ^
        -nh -nv -nc ^
        -set_global_encoding 1

To reconstruct the missing flight line information we look for gaps in the sequence of GPS time stamps by computing GPS time histograms with lasinfo and bins of 10 seconds in size:

lasinfo -i spur_raw\spur*.laz -merged ^
        -histo gps_time 10 ^
        -o spur_raw_all.txt

The resulting histogram exhibits the expected gaps in the GPS time stamps that happen when the survey plane leaves the target area and turns around to approach the next flight line. The subsequent histogram entries marked in red show gaps of 120 and 90 seconds respectively.

more spur_raw_all.txt
[...]
bin [27165909.595196404,27165919.595196255) has 3878890
bin [27165919.595196255,27165929.595196106) has 4314401
bin [27165929.595196106,27165939.595195957) has 435788
bin [27166049.595194317,27166059.595194168) has 1317998
bin [27166059.595194168,27166069.595194019) has 4432534
bin [27166069.595194019,27166079.59519387) has 4261732
[...]
bin [27166239.595191486,27166249.595191337) has 3289819
bin [27166249.595191337,27166259.595191188) has 3865892
bin [27166259.595191188,27166269.595191039) has 1989794
bin [27166349.595189847,27166359.595189698) has 2539936
bin [27166359.595189698,27166369.595189549) has 3948358
bin [27166369.595189549,27166379.5951894) has 3955071
[...]

Now that we validated their existence, we use these gaps in the GPS time stamps to split the LiDAR back into the original flightlines it was collected in. Using lassplit we produce one file per flightline as follows:

lassplit -i spur_raw\spur*.laz -merged ^
         -recover_flightlines_interval 10 ^
         -odir strips_raw -o strip.laz

In the next step we repair the missing “number of returns (per pulse)” field that was not provided in the ASCII file. This can be done with lasreturn assuming that the point records in each file are sorted by increasing GPS time stamp. This happens to be true already in our case as the original ASCII files where storing the LiDAR returns in acquisition order and we have not changed this order. If the point records are not yet in this order it can be created with lassort as follows. As these strips can have many points per file it may be necessary to run the new 64 bit executables by adding ‘-cpu64’ to the command line in order to avoid running out of memory.

lassort -i strips_raw\strips*.laz ^
        -gpstime -return_number ^
        -odir strips_sorted -olaz ^
        -cores 4 -cpu64

An order sorted by GPS time stamp is necessary as lasreturn expects point records with the same GPS time stamp (i.e. returns generated by the same laser pulse) to be back to back in the input file. To ‘-repair_number_of_returns’ the tool will load all returns with the same GPS time stamp  and update the “number of returns (per pulse)” attribute of each return to the highest “return number” of the loaded set.

lasreturn -i strips_sorted\strips*.laz ^
          -repair_number_of_returns ^
          -odir strips_repaired -olaz ^
          -cores 4

In a final step we use las2las with the ‘-files_are_flightlines’ option (or short ‘-faf’) to set the “file source ID” field in the LAS header and the “point source ID” attribute of every point record in the file to the same unique value per strip. The first file in the folder will have all its field set to 1, the next file will have all its field set to 2, the next file to 3 and so on. Please do not run this on multiple cores for the time being.

las2las -i strips_repaired\strips*.laz ^
        -files_are_flightlines ^
        -odir strips_final -olaz

It’s always useful to run a final validation of the files using lasvalidate to reassure yourself and the people you will be sharing the data with that nothing funky has happened during any of these conversion steps.

lasvalidate -i strips_final\strip*.laz ^
            -o strips_final\report.xml

And it can also be useful to add an overview in SHP or KML format to the delivery that can be created with lasboundary as follows:

lasboundary -i strips_final\strip*.laz ^
            -overview -labels ^
            -o strips_final\overview.kml

The result was 89 LAZ files (each containing one complete flightline) totaling 54 GB compared to 1102 ASCII files (each containing a slice of a flightline) totaling 574 GB.