A Quantitative Assessment of LIDAR Data Accuracy

Abstract

Airborne laser scanning sensors are impressive in their ability to collect a large number of topographic points in three dimensions in a very short time thus providing a high-resolution depiction of complex objects in the scanned areas. The quality of any final product naturally depends on the original data and the methods of generating it. Thus, the quality of the data should be evaluated before assessing any of its products. In this research, a detailed evaluation of a LIDAR system is presented, and the quality of the LIDAR data is quantified. This area has been under-emphasized in much of the published work on the applications of airborne laser scanning data. The evaluation is done by field surveying. The results address both the planimetric and the height accuracy of the LIDAR data. The average discrepancy of the LIDAR elevations from the surveyed study area is 0.12 m. In general, the RMSE of the horizontal offsets is approximately 0.50 m. Both relative and absolute height discrepancies of the LIDAR data have two components of variation. The first component is a random short-period variation while the second component has a less significant frequency and depends on the biases in the geo-positioning system.

Keywords

• assessment
• LIDAR
• GPS
• surveying
• RMSE
• accuracy