More on 3D and Planning

3D laser scanning, one of the more exciting surveying technologies to come on the scene in the past 20 years is starting to move out of the early adopter phase. Using the same LIDAR technology that I discussed in the 9/29 post, the use of terrestrial LIDAR is generally referred to as 3D laser scanning. The impact of this technology, from a pure surveying and mapping point of view, in the long run may be more important than GPS.

3D laser scanning produces what are called point clouds. These extremely dense sets of 3D points can produce detail to as fine as a few millimeters. Scans can produce millions to even billions of points. For land planning this may be overkill, but landscape architects will certainly benefit from the increased accuracy as well as the ability to "see" the site in 3D. This is perhaps more valuable than the millimeter accuracy.

But there's a catch - today's CAD engines were never designed to handle massive point clouds. Supporting these 3D datasets is going to be critical to the industry. In many cases today the 3D point clouds are being "dumbed" down to 2D because the CAD applications cannot support the 3D data.

If you are interested in laser scanning and have some ideas about how it will impact the planning profession please drop me a note.