Abstract
The rapid increase in applications of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scanners, followed by the development of various methods that are dedicated for survey data processing, visualization, and dissemination constituted the need of new open standards for storage and online distribution of collected three-dimensional data. However, over a decade of research in the area has resulted in a number of incompatible solutions that offer their own ways of disseminating results of LiDAR surveys (be it point clouds or reconstructed three-dimensional (3D) models) over the web. The article presents a unified system for remote processing, storage, visualization, and dissemination of 3D LiDAR survey data, including 3D model reconstruction. It is built with the use of open source technologies and employs open standards, such as 3D Tiles, LASer (LAS), and Object (OBJ) for data distribution. The system has been deployed for automatic organization, processing, and dissemination of LiDAR surveys that were performed in the city of Gdansk. The performance of the system has been measured using a selection of LiDAR datasets of various sizes. The system has shown to considerably simplify the process of data organization and integration, while also delivering tools for easy discovery, inspection, and acquisition of desired datasets.
Highlights
In recent years, the proliferation of affordable Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scanners has caused a rapid increase in their application
Geo-Inf. 2019, 8, 144 convenient manner of data sharing and exchange, and the easy handling of “the level of detail”, owing to the hierarchical organization of 3D Tiles. Another important issue that is related to LiDAR data storage, processing, visualization, and dissemination is the geometric model that is used for its representation
The client is built in Dynamic HyperText Markup Language (DHTML) technology, and the list of available layers is stored in a text file that contains javascript code, where the layers are grouped by their data type, origin, and categories
Summary
The proliferation of affordable Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scanners has caused a rapid increase in their application. While a standard format of storing 3D data exists in the form of the OGC CityGML [16], it has been primarily designed for representing buildings, roads, vegetation, terrain topography, and other elements of a three-dimensional city In consequence, it does not provide efficient methods of data streaming and visualization (such as tiling of larger datasets), which means that the user needs to solve these important problems [17]. Geo-Inf. 2019, 8, 144 convenient manner of data sharing and exchange, and the easy handling of “the level of detail”, owing to the hierarchical organization of 3D Tiles Another important issue that is related to LiDAR data storage, processing, visualization, and dissemination is the geometric model that is used for its representation.
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