ABSTRACT
Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) sensors can take discrete return measurements with multiple records per emitted pulse or full-waveform of a return signal at fixed time intervals such as 1 ns. This chapter discusses the basic components of LiDAR, physical principles of LiDAR, LiDAR accuracy, LiDAR data formats, LiDAR systems, and LiDAR resources. It focuses on three projects, which review zonal statistics in ArcGIS, creating a LASer dataset and working with LiDAR data using the LAS Dataset Toolbar in ArcGIS, and visualization of LiDAR data using QT Reader (Applied Imagery) and Fugroviewer (Fugro). A typical airborne LiDAR system is composed of a laser scanner; a ranging unit; control, monitoring, and recording units; differential global positioning system; and an inertial measurement unit. LiDAR accuracy is usually determined by statistical comparison between known points and measured laser points, and is typically measured as the standard deviation (σ2) and root mean square error.
