HJW EXPANDS ITS LIDAR PROCESSING CAPABILITIES WITH THE PURCHASE OF NEW SOFTWARE

Oakland, California, July 1, 2005 – HJW GeoSpatial (HJW), Inc., has recently expanded its LiDAR processing capabilities with the purchase of Terrasolid’s TerraScan software. TerraScan has proven to be an industry standard for LiDAR data processing and classification, and is part of a suite of software tools offered by Terrasolid that address the processing requirements for LiDAR data utilization. Since LiDAR acquisition systems are continually being enhanced by technological innovations, it is crucial for HJW to adopt processing capabilities to support and exploit these changes.

LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is a technology used to directly acquire 3D point positions by way of laser ranging from an airborne platform. It is used to gather raw data for use in digital terrain modeling. After acquisition, the 3D point data undergoes a filtering and classification process that extracts the “bare earth” points which are used to represent the terrain. This filtering process is performed with the TerraScan software.

HJW quickly identified that LiDAR-derived mapping is complimentary to photogrammetric mapping, and the fusion of the two technologies can add value for the client. By relying on the vertical accuracy of the LiDAR data, high altitude photography can be used to guide manually-collected, LiDAR-controlled breaklines. This enhancement generates a more representative digital elevation model, as it adds human interpretation to an irregularly placed set of terrain points that have undergone automated filtering. Contours that are derived from this method are much easier to interpret than contours generated from the LiDAR dataset alone. This approach was successfully implemented with HJW’s 2005 mapping of the San Pablo Bay Wetlands in Sonoma County, CA.