$30 off During Our Annual Pro Sale. View Details »
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Taming Terrain: Sculpting Geoscapes With LiDAR
Search
Andrew Godwin
August 31, 2018
0
310
Taming Terrain: Sculpting Geoscapes With LiDAR
A presentation I gave at Electromagnetic Field 2018
Andrew Godwin
August 31, 2018
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Andrew Godwin
See All by Andrew Godwin
Reconciling Everything
andrewgodwin
1
350
Django Through The Years
andrewgodwin
0
270
Writing Maintainable Software At Scale
andrewgodwin
0
480
A Newcomer's Guide To Airflow's Architecture
andrewgodwin
0
380
Async, Python, and the Future
andrewgodwin
2
700
How To Break Django: With Async
andrewgodwin
1
760
Taking Django's ORM Async
andrewgodwin
0
760
The Long Road To Asynchrony
andrewgodwin
0
720
The Scientist & The Engineer
andrewgodwin
1
800
Featured
See All Featured
How Fast Is Fast Enough? [PerfNow 2025]
tammyeverts
3
410
More Than Pixels: Becoming A User Experience Designer
marktimemedia
2
260
Designing Dashboards & Data Visualisations in Web Apps
destraynor
231
54k
Large-scale JavaScript Application Architecture
addyosmani
515
110k
Navigating the moral maze — ethical principles for Al-driven product design
skipperchong
1
210
Unsuck your backbone
ammeep
671
58k
brightonSEO & MeasureFest 2025 - Christian Goodrich - Winning strategies for Black Friday CRO & PPC
cargoodrich
2
65
Winning Ecommerce Organic Search in an AI Era - #searchnstuff2025
aleyda
0
1.8k
HU Berlin: Industrial-Strength Natural Language Processing with spaCy and Prodigy
inesmontani
PRO
0
100
Design and Strategy: How to Deal with People Who Don’t "Get" Design
morganepeng
132
19k
Visualization
eitanlees
150
16k
Noah Learner - AI + Me: how we built a GSC Bulk Export data pipeline
techseoconnect
PRO
0
73
Transcript
Taming Terrain Sculpting geoscapes from LIDAR Andrew Godwin @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin Hi, I’m Andrew Godwin • Python
programmer-at-large • Geodata enthusiast • Does not (yet) own LiDAR equipment
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin 1. Data 2. Modelling 3. Fabrication
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin 1. Elevation Data
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin Can be either surface or terrain
(no buildings/plants) Digital Elevation Model
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin Source: maps-for-free.com
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin Hawai'i (ASTER GDEM)
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin Radar
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin Low resolution Needs large-ish antennas Long
distance
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin LiDAR
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin Light Detection And Ranging
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin Very high resolution (cm range) Compact
devices (planes or vehicles) Short distances
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin Free data in both point clouds
and DEMs! e.g. Environment Agency, USGIS
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin data.gov.uk earthexplorer.usgs.gov
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin 2. Processing
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin "Point Cloud"
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin Multiple returns Too much detail Noisy
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin a. "Thin" point cloud b. Rasterise
point cloud to DEM c. Smooth results
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin 3. Fabrication
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin 3D Printing Laser Cutting Milling
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin 3D Printing
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin 4 - 12 unattended hours (per
15cm tile) Difficult to line up perfectly Has to print perfectly square!
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin Milling
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin 2 - 4 attended hours per
10cm piece Small features hard to mill CNC mills ain't cheap
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin Laser Cutting
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin 15 minutes to cut, 15 mins
to glue Only works for features surrounded by flat Limited detail
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin What's next?
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin Less human-intensive milling Better laser cut
feature highlighting 3D directly from point clouds Somehow getting a LiDAR scanner?!
Andrew Godwin / @andrewgodwin code: github.com/andrewgodwin/lidartile blog: aeracode.org videos: youtube.com/user/andrewgodwin
Thanks. Andrew Godwin @andrewgodwin aeracode.org