A Mindset Change in Laser Scanning Management

The wide availability of online map services nowadays underlines the growing demand for data via the internet. However, there are no comparable services for Lidar data due to its complex structure, the difficulty of accessing data and the size of the files, to name but a few reasons. These factors, in combination with strict security and privacy measures, mean that only companies with sufficient knowledge, financial resources and software are able to take full advantage of the high accuracy that laser scanning technology and Lidar data can offer by applying this information to their projects. LiDAR Online aims to overcome all these barriers by introducing a solution to enable Lidar data to be used online just like any other GIS information.

As more and more companies in various fields use Lidar data in increasingly diverse projects, this ‘new’, highly accurate data source is continuing to gain in popularity over more traditional data acquisition methods. Meanwhile, public initiatives driven by national or regional governments in various countries (such as IGN in Spain) have scanned large regions and thus substantially extended the data available, which in turn can be of benefit to many different projects. Hence, even companies who were previously unaware of Lidar technology have become interested in the possibilities and started to request this kind of cartographic information for use in their projects. This development, along with the increasing online availability of other geospatial data, has contributed to the need for a new platform to allow current and potential users to access and use this new data source in a secure and reliable way, as is already the case when working with other GIS data on the internet.

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