LiDAR Software Packages

The development of LiDAR processing and visualisation software packages is currently a hot topic within the industry. There are numerous packages available with varying usability and price tags. ArcGIS is a common choice for many of our uses as it is arguably one of the most user friendly and is almost ubiquitous within UK academic institutes. Furthermore Arc is (rumoured) to be natively integrating LasTools into its next release (plug-in tool box currently available) which would be a big bonus. LasTools is a powerful set of utilities which can be filter, clip and convert etc point cloud data. These tools are available as a stand alone package but care should be taken as they are not all free! Where as GRASS GIS is! GRASS can be operated either by its GUI (arguably not the most intuitive) or via Unix based Command-Line. ARSF-DAN uses GRASS for generating DEMs it does however require LAS files to be converted into ASCII before being able to read them into its database. This incontinent extra step is likely to be removed with GRASS 7 (r.in.lidar / v.in.lidar) which is currently only available as an unstable release.

Examples of Packages with Full Waveform Support (to the best of my knowledge):

• ArcGIS (with LAStools)
• TerraSolid
• LasTools
• Full Analyze
• Qcoherent
• Merrick Mars
• GRASS GIS

19/09/2013