An Integrated Workflow for Lidar / Optical Data Mapping for Security Applications

This paper elucidates the potential of LiDAR data for information generation for security applications. The study is embedded in the EU Network of Excellence GMOSS. General, security applications cover a large area from infrastructure monitoring (e.g. power stations, pipelines) or border monitoring to less tangible threats like terrorism and civil security / homeland security. It is demonstrated that for those security applications where the birds eye view can generally provide useful information LiDAR data are increasingly a valuable source of information, either stand alone or – preferable – in combination with optical data. The empirical work focuses on the extraction of some buildings and power lines. It is demonstrated that aggregated grid data in form of a DTM and DSM are only partially suitable to extract linear and point-type features such as power lines or small power transformation stations. Detectability clearly depends on the spatial resolution but generally 3D point clouds from first and last pulse information allow more sophisticated object extraction methods.