Processing of ALS data using LAStools

Abstract

The airborne laser scanning has been proven as very efficient method for collecting the surface data. As ALS collects extremely large amount of data, efficient use of this data involves the use of some semi-automatic or automatic methods. For this purpose, large number of solutions, different in scope, cost and efficiency are available on the market. One of the available solutions is LAStools software package. Focus of this paper is on the functionalities of the LAStools software package, which are tested and assessed through the experiment. The experiment covered creation of standard topographic products from ALS point cloud using LAStools. At the end of this paper, conclusions about the possibilities of the LAStools software package are made, with a special overview of the advantages and disadvantages, the possibilities and shortcomings.

Keywords

• airborne laser scanning
• LAStools
• point cloud processing