Programmme will use LIDAR to map the topography of England
Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) is being used to measure land topography and assess coastal erosion and geomorphology by the Environment Agency. Information is being set aside for managed retreat of sea defences. There is also a need to obtain data for a model linking land use, soil type and the potential for erosion prediction.
The Agency has purchased a LIDAR system which it has installed in a survey aircraft along with its other operational remote sensing instruments, including the Compact Airborne Spectral Imager (CASI), a thermal imager, high quality sVHS video camera and a digital camera. The aircraft is positioned and navigated using Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) corrected to known ground reference points.
The Agency has generated routines to allow for the removal of surface features from the data sets including vegetation and buildings. Products that can be generated from the LIDAR data include colour coded elevation models, height contour plots and three-dimensional perspective views allowing easy visualisation of surveyed areas.
The aircraft flies at a height of about 800 metres above ground level and a scanning mirror allows a swathe width of about 600 metres to be surveyed during a flight. Individual measurements are made on the ground at 2 metre intervals allowing a highly resolved model of the terrain to be generated.
The Agency's Flood Defence function has a requirement under the Water Resources Act 1991 to monitor the flood plain. The latest catalogue showing the coverage of archived LIDAR data is available and viewable using the downloadable database and associated shape (.shp) file. A .zip file containing these files can be downloaded from the EA website.
When unzipped, the shape file can be opened using any ESRI GIS application, such as ArcView, ArcGIS, or ArcExplorer (a free viewer available from the ESRI website. It can also be viewed using MapInfo. In addition, the database file (.dbf) may be viewed through any spreadsheet application, e.g. Microsoft Excel.
The Agency has purchased a LIDAR system which it has installed in a survey aircraft along with its other operational remote sensing instruments, including the Compact Airborne Spectral Imager (CASI), a thermal imager, high quality sVHS video camera and a digital camera. The aircraft is positioned and navigated using Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) corrected to known ground reference points.
The Agency has generated routines to allow for the removal of surface features from the data sets including vegetation and buildings. Products that can be generated from the LIDAR data include colour coded elevation models, height contour plots and three-dimensional perspective views allowing easy visualisation of surveyed areas.
The aircraft flies at a height of about 800 metres above ground level and a scanning mirror allows a swathe width of about 600 metres to be surveyed during a flight. Individual measurements are made on the ground at 2 metre intervals allowing a highly resolved model of the terrain to be generated.
The Agency's Flood Defence function has a requirement under the Water Resources Act 1991 to monitor the flood plain. The latest catalogue showing the coverage of archived LIDAR data is available and viewable using the downloadable database and associated shape (.shp) file. A .zip file containing these files can be downloaded from the EA website.
When unzipped, the shape file can be opened using any ESRI GIS application, such as ArcView, ArcGIS, or ArcExplorer (a free viewer available from the ESRI website. It can also be viewed using MapInfo. In addition, the database file (.dbf) may be viewed through any spreadsheet application, e.g. Microsoft Excel.
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