Monday, 14 February 2011 13:50
3D Topography
One of the main cornerstones of Digital Soil Mapping (DSM) is the characterization of surface topological features of terrain. The most effective way of capturing these features at the moment is LiDAR. Th eprocessing of LiDAR data into 3D surfaces represents a certain amount difficulty. LiDAR data sets typically represent millions to billions of points. Each point is GIS positioned and represent an X, Y, Z sample of a surface. Combining all these samples into a 3D topography can be a nightmare if the wrong approach is used and quite simple if the right approach is used.
The following demonstration represents the lower portion of a watershed that contributes to Lake Huron. It is derived entirely from LiDAR data and took only a few minutes to set up. All scales were preserved and the corresponding ortho image of the area can be applied as a texture as necessary. Other images representing information for the surface from systems like teh ESRI products can be applied as necessary. Some of the other demonstrations on this site show maps such as crop yield applied to the surface. This surface was rendered with a simple color to show the detail of the LiDAR data and the ability of the surface to represent the detail.
The ability to create these surfaces simply and to be able to export them to real-time systems is critical to being able to conduct dynamic stochastic simulations.