LIDAR Data Images – The Beer Store Truck
Cool screen shot image created with LIDAR point data (intensity values) captured during a LIDAR survey in Ottawa with the TITAN mobile laser scanning system.
Tag Archive for: LIDAR
Nicaragua Trip (May – June 2009)
After visiting every province of Canada and almost every state in the United States during the past three years, I have finaly embarked upon my first international trip (not including USA travel …), 
to the country of Nicaragua, the largest state in Central America bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south.
This is a Helicopter based LIDAR acquisition job surveying for the construction of a hydro dam to be built in the inner central-east part of the country and involves a few stops in various places with the first stop in the city of Managua, the capital Nicaragua and also the largest urban center of Nicaragua, located on the southwestern shore of Lake Managua. The city has a population of about 1,680,100 million people and it is a very busy place to explore.
After arriving in the country and 
leaving the Managua airport towards the hotel, a person can easily get the wrong impression about this city as the drive goes through a pretty poor lower class district with numerous run down buildings, lots of people on the streets etc. But as you slowly make your way into the core of the city you find that Managua has plenty to offer and although may appear somewhat behind the times quite often (compared to North American standards), it still has all the modern features that one would expect from a major city like shopping malls, hotels, casinos, restaurant chains and much more.
The city of Managua has experienced the rise and fall of many political powers throughout it’s history and has also suffered some devastating earthquakes over time both of witch are evident in the urban surroundings. Currently it is the economic, political, commercial and industrial center of Nicaragua with plenty to offer it’s people and visitors.
What has made the trip even more interesting for me is my lack of knowledge of Spanish, the 
main language spoken here (I was told that there was plenty of English speaking people, if so I have yet to many of meet them yet … ). But just like many of my jobs working in Quebec and other non English based such areas, I have still managed to get by even though a lot of the time I have no idea what people are saying to me (just keeping it real…). On the other hand it is a great way to learn a new language and I have come a long way, since I first arrived here. So expect more blog postings from this interesting travel opportunity.
Read more about my Nicaragua Trip or check out some of my other travel locations
:)
Yellowknife, North West Territories (June 2008)
Finished up my first survey in the North, will be headed back south tomorrow after a small 4 day trip. Would have been nice to have a few more days up here to get out and explore or do some fishing (but these smaller in and out jobs are nice to have once and a while).
I did get a few hours free to check out the City of Yellowknife (probably all we needed) and had lunch at the famous Wild Cat Cafe, witch was kind of neat. Saw a some strange things here and there too like a ford truck turned into a home made snow mobile.
The job here was for a small fixed wing aerial LIDAR survey of an area northeast of the city of Yellowknife, and just south of Gordon Lake. The terrain there was really rocky, due to the extreme rugged Canadian Shield and very sparse soil cover. I was some what surprised though by the amount of trees that were there, it wasn’t heavily forested by any means but trees were fairly abundant and we had to choose our landing places wisely.
Gordon Lake is one of the lakes that they use to create the famous winter Ice Road that allows goods and equipment to be shipped up north to the diamond mines for a few months every year. We actually fuelled at one of the base camps that builds and services the road so met a few neat people there with interesting stories to tell.
Gordon Lake had the most mosquitoes I have ever experienced by far. dark swarms of them clouding around us every where we went.We flew into the area to do our ground GPS control survey via a neat little MD500 helicopter and were quickly swarmed by the little buggers. They were not actually doing much biting due to the amount of bug dope we had by man it was hard to concentrate on work. After 3 or 4 hours of that we were happy to get back to town free of those little critters.
Here are some photos of our work out at Gordon Lake, NWT.
WildCat Cafe, Yellowknife (June, 2008)
I Finally got my chance to explore some of the Canadian north, with the first stop being in Yellowknife, North West Territories. Yellowknife, is a neat little place, perhaps bigger then I expected and containing many more similarities to other small Canadian Towns and Cities probably due to the city being connected to the rest of the country via Highway. Any place that has a Walmart and a Tim Horton’s after all can not be all that remote.
Have not a lot of time to look around due to the job being rather small and the weather being so nice. Today it was the warmest place in the country I think, the mercury hit 29 degrees and unfortunately since the sun doesn’t go down, the work day was stretched a little further.
One of Yellowknife’s best known historic landmarks and popular tourist attractions, is a little summer restaurant called the Wildcat Cafe. The building portion of the restaurant is a small old mining camp style wooden log structure that was originally built in 1937 and then later designated as a heritage building in 1992.
The WildCat Cafe is known as the city’s oldest restaurant and continues to operate every year in the original log structure, with extra seating setup out side. Food served at the Wildcat Cafe is mostly typical Canadian fast food (fries, burgers, ice cream etc.) but they also add a little northern touch combining a few dishes with a little Caribou and MuskOx as well.
Interesting enough, a replica of the Wildcat Cafe cabin has been built at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Quebec, witch was neat to see after being to the real thing.
Flood Simulation Modeling with High Resolution LIDAR
I created and presented the following poster that summarized my Flood Simulation Modeling with High Resolution LIDAR project as part of my Applied Geomatics graduate work at COGS in 2004. The areas in the poster are of Shediac & Parlee Beach, New Brunswick
3D Toronto Images
Below are a few 3D Toronto images from a demonstration that I gave comparing Esri Arc Scene with FLY in PCI Geomatica. I generated the digital surface model (DSM) from some demo LIDAR all hits data that we had. The coverage area is for a small portion of downtown Toronto centered around Toronto City Hall.
TITAN Mobile LIDAR Scanner
I have been operating and managing LIDAR projects using the TITAN mobile laser scanning system for over two years now, in a variety of projects from coast to coast. This post contains some information on the hardware and various photos of the TITAN mobile laser scanning system.
LIDAR GPS Validation
Summary poster created to show GPS validation data collected for 2003 LIDAR survey of the Annapolis Valley. Poster was one of several presented at the Geomatics Atlantic 2003 Conference held at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia and posted at the Applied Geomatics Research Group seminar room in Middleton, Nova Scotia.
