Identifying bridge deformation using laser scanning data

Increasing traffic weights and aggressive environmental conditions may result in unexpected deterioration of a bridge’s components. Particularly, most bridges in Europe and US over half life span are affected by such impact. Structural deficiencies may cause partial or full collapse of bridges resulting in problems for human life, economy,...

Evaluating voxel enabled scalable intersection of large point clouds

Laser scanning has become a well established surveying solution for obtaining 3D geo-spatial information on objects and environment. Nowadays scanners acquire up to millions of points per second which makes point cloud huge. Laser scanning is widely applied from airborne, carborne and stable platforms, resulting in point clouds obtained at...

Trends in detecting changes from repeated laser scanning data

Change detection is an important application of laser scanning data. It is also a challenging application as errors that are inevitably present when determining the geometric state of a scene of interest in a certain epoch will somehow add up when comparing the geometric state between epochs. As a consequence it is often difficult to distinguish...

Optimizing terrestrial laser scanning measurement set-up

One of the main applications of the terrestrial laser scanner is the visualization, modeling and monitoring of man-made structures like buildings. Especially surveying applications require on one hand a quickly obtainable, high resolution point cloud but also need observations with a known and well described quality. To obtain a 3D point cloud,...

Evaluation of a LIDAR Land-Based Mobile Mapping System for Monitoring Sandy Coasts

The Dutch coast is characterized by sandy beaches flanked by dunes. Understanding the morphology of the coast is essential for defense against flooding of the hinterland. Because most dramatic changes of the beach and the first dune row happen during storms, it is important to assess the state of the coast immediately after a storm. This is...

Evaluation of a laser land-based mobile mapping system for monitoring sandy coasts

The Dutch coast is characterized by sandy beaches flanked by dunes. Its morphology is essential for the defense against flooding of the hinterland. Therefore it is monitored on a yearly basis by Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS). However, it is recognized that most erosion of the beach and first dune row takes place during storms. To assess the...

Incidence angle influence on the quality of terrestrial laser scanning points

A terrestrial laser scanner measures the distance to an object with a precision in the order of millimeters. The quality of each single point in a point cloud affects post-processing applications, such as deformation analysis or 3D modeling. The quality of a scan point is influenced by four major factors: instrument calibration, atmospheric...

Applications for point cloud skeletonizations in forestry and agriculture

In recent years, both airborne and terrestrial laser scanning developed to a standard technique for acquiring information on terrestrial landscapes. Here forest inventory and orchard management is considered. Inventory and parameterization of individual trees in orchards and forests are of large interest in nowadays society because of the...

Reducing the error in terrestrial laser scanning by optimizing the measurement set-up

High spatial resolution and fast capturing possibilities make 3D terrestrial laser scanners widely used in engineering applications and cultural heritage recording. Phase based laser scanners can measure distances to object surfaces with a precision in the order of a few millimeters at ranges between 1 and 80 m. However, the quality of a laser...