Airborne Hydrography

Feb 23, 2015

, Canada , has expanded its bathymetric LIDAR services with the purchase of the CHIROPTERA II, an innovative LIDAR solution for topographic mapping and shallow water surveying in depths of up to 15 meters (50 feet). The investment creates new opportunities for clients seeking to benefit from reliable, dense and highly accurate LIDAR data in projects such as environmental and coastal monitoring, infrastructure planning, oil and gas exploration and other near-shore applications. CHIROPTERA II simultaneously captures the full waveform in both the 35 kHz bathymetric channel and the 500 kHz topographic channel to provide high-detail maps. The latest version incorporates the industry-leading 80-megapixel four-band Leica RCD30 medium-format camera, NovAtel SPAN GNSS-IMU subsystem, Leica MissionPro mission planning software and Leica FlightPro flight navigation software. The scanner package allows installation in the Leica PAV100 stabilized mount, providing perfect stabilization and reducing the number of flight lines needed, especially in turbulent weather. Geomatics Data Solutions, a woman-owned small business that specializes in providing data acquisition and processing services for marine and coastal environments, has an extensive track record of collecting, processing and analyzing LIDAR bathymetry and multibeam data as well as cable route charting. Owner and hydropher Carol Lockhart is excited about the potential for CHIROPTERA II to transform the market. “Earlier bathymetric LIDAR sensors were primarily research systems and tended to be unreliable. Additionally, high data densities were difficult to achieve beyond a certain depth, so there was often a gap between LIDAR and acoustic data,” she said. “The CHIROPTERA II is a much more mature sensor. It's both stable and reliable, and the algorithms for picking the depth and developing the intensity and being able to extract data from turbid waters and darker seabeds are much more advanced. As a result, it provides a much more efficient and effective way to capture bathymetric data.” The high-density data reveals small objects underwater as well as fine details of breakwaters and jetties, Lockhart said. The system also has the ability to automatically distinguish between land and water. “When you're crossing from land to water on every single line, that capability saves a lot of time in processing and improves the accuracy of the data,” she said. Lockhart is already seeing an increase in demand for bathymetric LIDAR because of these innovations and expects this trend to continue. (To learn more, sign up for the webinar “Bathymetric LIDAR: How Better Data is Opening New Markets,” presented by Carol Lockhart