Useful Links

This page lists software and web pages that you may find useful. Obviously plenty of other software exists and may be useful, but these are some of the ones we know of and have found useful. If you have developed software / tutorials (in particular using NERC-ARF data) you would like to be added to the list, let us know.

NERC-ARF relevant

• ​NERC-ARF Operations. Page for operations at BAS. Contains information on planes and applying for flights.
• ​Centre for Environmental Data Analysis The archive of NERC-ARF data is publicly available here (after registration)
• ​NERC Field Spectroscopy Facility
• ​JASMIN Computing platform available to NERC researchers. Has direct access to NERC-ARF archive. For more details about data processing using JASMIN see ​https://github.com/arsf/arsf_on_jasmin
• ​Natural Environment Research Council NERC is the funding body for NERC-ARF
• ​NERC-ARF Tools on GitHub A collection of tools for working with NERC-ARF data (including reading LiDAR data in LAS 1.3 format)

• ​@NERC_ARF_DAN. Our twitter page, follow us for updates and publications using NERC-ARF data.

LiDAR

Software

FW - Supports full waveform data.

• ​ARSF DEM Scripts - General scripts for creating DSMs/DTMs from LiDAR data.
• ​LAStools Toolbox for processing of LiDAR data (open source and commercial components, source available from ​GitHub)
• ​Laspy A Python library for working with LAS files
• ​OPALS Software for processing discrete and full waveform LiDAR data (commercial, academic licenses available). FW
• ​SPDLib Open source library for storing and processing discrete and full waveform LiDAR data. Supports reading/writing LAS and ASCII files. FW
• ​points2grid A tool for generating DEMs from LAS and ASCII files. Development version has option to filter by class and / or return. More details are available on the ​opentopography page.
• ​FUSION
• ​PulseWaves Tools for working with full waveform data, and library for reading full waveform data in the pulsewaves format. (open and closed source components). FW
• ​Fleurdelas An open-source IDL reader/writer for LAS files
• ​PDAL Point Data Abstraction Library - Library for reading and writing point data in different formats, similar to GDAL but for points.
• ​LibLAS C/C++ library for reading/writing LAS files (largely replaced with LASlib from LAStools and laspy)

• ​LAG Github page for our in-house LiDAR viewer
• ​DASOS Software for visualisation and classification of full waveform LiDAR and hyperspectral data developed by Centre for Digital Entertainment / Plymouth Marine Laboratory PhD student Milto Miltiadou. For an overview see ​this post FW
• ​SPD 3D Points Viewer Tool for 3D visualisation of LiDAR data in SPD format. FW
• ​plasio Online LAS file viewer (​source code)
• ​Lidarview Another online LAS file viewer
• ​fugroviewer LiDAR viewer (requires registration)
• ​Pure File Magic Area-Based Editor (PFMABE) - Capable of visualising waveforms in LAS 1.3 files FW

• ​fityk curve fitting tool (useful for full waveform LiDAR data). Free for version 0.9.8 and older.FW

• ​Installing geospatial software on Linux. Instructions on how to install a number of packages from source under Ubuntu / CentOS.

Tutorials

• ARSF lidar tutorials. Covers creating a DEM and extracting waveforms.
• ​ARSF DEM scripts tutorial. Tutorial on creating a DEM using the ARSF DEM scripts.
• ​GRASS LiDAR Tutorial
• ​LAStools tutorial part 1 on quality checking
• ​LAStools tutorial part 2 on lidar preparation
• ​LAStools tutorial part 3 on DEM generation
• ​Create a DEM using LAStool in QGIS tutorial on using LAStools to create a DEM within QGIS
• ​SPDLib Tutorials Links to download data and workshop material for courses on SPDLib. Cover creating a DSM/DTM and processing using a HPC.
• ​Creating a DTM/DSM using SPDLib
• ​NEON Education Page tutorials and teaching resources for working with LiDAR data, in particular using R. Hyperspectral tutorials also available.
• ​Processing ARSF data with open source tools - blog post from ARSF user.

Other

• ​LAStools Google groups Forum for discussion of LAStools
• ​PulseWaves Google groups Forum for discussion of PulseWaves - also some general full waveform discussion

Hyperspectral

Software

• ​APL Github page for our in-house hyperspectral processing code
• ​ARSF binary reader Reader for ENVI format binary files
• ​ATCOR Program for atmospheric correction of spectral remote sensing data
• ​PySpectra A Python library for reading spectra from files (e.g., field spectra)
• ​PyMicrotops A Python library for reading Microtops data
• ​Py6S A Python wrapper for the 6S atmospheric model
• ​GLIMPS Viewer for ENVI format images (free for non-commercial use)

Tutorials

• ​Hyperspectral classification in QGIS Blog post describing supervised classification of hyperspectral data using QGIS.
• ​Surface Reflectance Calibration USGS tutorial on calibrating data to surface reflectance.

Digital Photography

• ​ExifTool for reading tags in RCD tiff images.
• ​efoto - open source digital photogrammetric workstation
• ​Agisoft PhotoScan - Commercial photogrammetry software (Pro version required - education discounts available).

General

Software

• ​Cyberduck. FTP program (Windows / OS X). Recommended to download NERC-ARF data via FTP. See guide here
• ​ENVI Commercial geospatial image viewer.
• ​TuiView Open source geospatial image viewer, supports viewing spectral profiles and opening zipped bil files (as provided with NERC-ARF deliveries). Contains patches from NERC-ARF for better handling of hyperspectral data.
• ​GDAL Geospatial Data Abstraction Library. An open source library for reading/writing common raster formats including BIL/BSQ with bindings for C++ and Python. Also provides a number of command line ​utilities for converting file formats, reprojecting data, creating mosaics etc.
• ​rGDAL GDAL bindings for R.
• ​GRASS Open source GIS (powerful and full featured, but with a steep learning curve).
• ​QGIS Open source GIS package, latest version provides interface to GRASS tools.
• ​OSGeo4W Windows installation package for a number of open source remote sensing and GIS software packages (including GDAL, GRASS and QGIS).
• ​PROJ4 cartographic projections library useful for re-projecting point data but can be difficult to use.
• ​Raster I/O Simplification (RIOS) Python library built on top of GDAL for raster processing. Reads and writes data in tiles and passes blocks of data as NumPy arrays for efficient processing of large datasets.
• ​RSGISLib The Remote Sensing and GIS Library. A collection of tools for processing remote sensing and GIS datasets accessed using Python bindings