The plane scanned the city – its buildings and streets, parks and early-morning pedestrians – with Lidar technology (presumably no traffic tickets were written.) The map, which will cost the city some $US450,000 to make, will be used to pinpoint areas prone to flooding and to determine if the city’s rooftops are suitable for the installation of solar panels.
The New York Times mentions that city officials are considering it a 21st Century upgrade of The Panorama, the massive architectural model of the city that Robert Moses created in 1964.
A pretty awesome thing to begin with, made all the more awesome by the power of lasers. [NYTimes]
Pinball
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 1:01 PMThe accuracy of this won’t be as awesome as most people think.
It’ll be good enough for civil engineers to undertake flood modelling, considering 2d flood modelling uses a large grid of a couple of metres. It won’t be a perfectly crisp 3d model though. Trees and overhead structures will interfere causing some wacky levels, as will cars on the road. In addition unlike a surveyor on the street, laser cannot determine what are critical features (like kerb lines, changes of grade) and what aren’t.
Shane
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 1:12 PMI’ve not read the article yet, but they are using the ldar concept (radar using light instead of sound), then it should be capable of producing some really good results quickly – Don’t know all the details but I’ve seen it used to measure contour changes through forests quite successfully…
SF
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 at 6:51 PMpew pew