Data Fusion: Mobile and Aerial LiDAR

Over the weekend, Baker's latest article on LiDAR News was published.  The topic is "Data Fusion" - Mobile and Aerial LiDAR as well as traditional surveying.  In an earlier posting on the blog, I wrote about Knowing your Limitations - whether they're environmental, scale or technological.  Often, one tool or technology does not completely solve a problem.  By fusing data from multiple sources, we're able to complete the picture. 

Below are the images from the article in more detail:

The image above presents the fusion of Aerial LiDAR (red) and Mobile LiDAR (white). The tops of structures, including poles and push braces, are completely saturated with LiDAR points while the rail corridor (immediately adjacent to the buildings) contains dense information.

The image above depicts the fusion of Mobile LiDAR and Traditional Surveying (Aerial LiDAR points removed for clarity). The LiDAR data was supplemented outside of the Mobile LiDAR corridor to locate utilities, property boundaries and other features not captured by Aerial means within the larger corridor.

As the closing states, the information represented in surveying/engineering drawings can be captured in a number of ways.  Having an array of tools at your disposal can dramatically impact how you approach an assignment.  The integration of outputs from various technologies can provide a different perspective.

Cheers!
Stephen