00:01Lidar often contains hundreds of millions of points stored in multiple files…

00:05…making for a data management, analysis, and dissemination nightmare.

00:10Please welcome our lead 3D product engineer to take away the nightmare, Nathan Shephard.

00:19Thanks, John.

00:22Collections of lidar can be enormous, and they come with several requirements.

00:26You want quick viewing, update an analysis, and you want to be able to manage and share that data with others.

00:32At 10.1, ArcGIS has native support for lidar and all the tools you need for working with it.

00:39Let's start with viewing lidar.

00:42I recently downloaded some lidar from the USGS, about 10 million points, and are delivered in 20 LASS files.

00:53 To view this data, it's as simple as pointing to the folder containing those LASS files and hitting OK.

00:59And in a few seconds, we're seeing lidar natively in ArcMap.

01:07It's okay to clap.

01:10By default, it's rendered as elevation points, but we can use other lidar attributes such as the class code.

01:17Now we see blue points for the ocean, brown points for the ground, green points for vegetation.

01:25It's a layer so we can change symbology and make our building points yellow.

01:30Now lidar is 3D, so we've included a 3D preview window for lidar…

01:45…and the ability to drag out a profile line and see it as a cross section.

01:52You might notice that some of these points aren't classified yet, these light gray points.

01:56And because the human is really good at recognizing objects from abstract things like treetops from a bunch of points…

02:04…we can update those class codes directly in the source LASS files.

02:10And, we've been looking at lidar as points. We can also look at lidar as a surface.

02:20Right now I'm using all the points to generate a surface from my lidar…

02:25…and it contains buildings and trees and outhouses, and it's a really good surface for doing line of sight.

02:32We can filter our data, and we can use the ground points after I change it correctly to the right filter.

02:45Now we can see that lidar as a surface, and this is good for slope analysis or creating contours.

02:54So you add those in.

02:56The point is, you can choose which points participate in your lidar surface…

03:00… and then use it for many different types of analysis.

03:04ArcScene also supports lidar, and in this view…

03:09…you can see that that bare earth lidar surface is very messy and noisy over the ocean, over the bay.

03:15We can use constraint features to improve that surface.

03:23And, if we want to see our buildings and trees and boats and outhouses again…

03:30…we can just add the nonground points as a second layer and then zoom in and continue to investigate our lidar.

03:46So that's an introduction to quick viewing and analysis of lidar. Let's talk about data management and sharing.

03:53At [ArcGIS] 10.1, the mosaic dataset has been expanded to also support lidar…

03:58…so I can manage and look after my San Diego data using a mosaic.

04:03I can use that same mosaic for all of my California lidar like the strip of lidar that's along the coast at Huntington Beach…

04:16I can see the full extent of all my lidar.

04:19The point is my lidar is managed.

04:23Then, when it's time to share this lidar with others, we simply publish this mosaic out as and image service.

04:30And when it's time to do our next project, say for Crafton Hills College…

04:34…we simply connect to our Amazon server in the cloud, we drag in the image server, and we can see we have lidar coverage here.

04:44This is a rasterized, hillshaded representation of my lidar.

04:49If I need to work with the points, then the download option makes it easy for me to select…

04:55…and then download the LASS files that I need for this area.

05:01My lidar is shared and it's accessible.

05:11To wrap up, let's look at a slightly different kind of lidar, lidar captured from the ground.

05:18Here we have a hundred million points captured by NAVTEQ by their roaming trucks.

05:27This data is really good for validating your existing GIS data such as the size, shape, and height of your buildings.

05:36It also contains beautiful color values so it's adding some realism to my view.

05:43By default, ArcScene is thinning out the number of points. I can always choose to see an area in full resolution.

05:59Some of you are already using lidar.

06:00Some of you have got lidar tucked away in bookshelves, cupboards, under your desk.

06:05At [ArcGIS] 10.1, we really want you to get that lidar out, start working with it and taking advantage of these new capabilities.