Discovering and Mapping Natural Hazards with LiDAR DOGAMI serves up 33 terabytes of LiDAR data to Oregonians O n February 17, 2011, President Obama declared a major disaster in the State of Oregon due to a severe winter storm that caused flooding, mudslides, landslides and debris flows during the previous month. Western Oregon counties including Clackamas, Clatsop, Crook, Douglas, Lincoln, and Tillamook were all affected. The total public assistance cost estimate is more than $6 million dollars. To help mitigate events like this and maintain a safe environment for those living in the state, the Oregon Department of Geology & Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) is using light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data to more accurately find and analyze hazards like landslides and debris flow. DOGAMI also makes this LiDAR-data available to the public using an innova- tive solution based on Esri’s ArcGIS, the standard GIS platform used in the state of Oregon. Seeing the Hazards Through the Trees Oregon is known for its natural beauty. From cliff-lined beaches to snow-capped mountains, the landscape has been formed into modern day eye candy from a millennia of geologic processes. With this beauty comes danger—the earth’s movements that created such breathtaking views can also be the cause of destruction. Natural hazards such as floods, landslides, earthquakes, coastal erosion, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis are all pos- sible—and have occurred in Oregon over the past century. By R. L. Smith, J. English 46 2012 Vol. 2 No. 4 Maintaining an accurate inventory of these hazards can be difficult in a region that contains such lush tree cover and is inundated with more cloudy days than sunny. Traditionally, aerial photography is used to create topographic data through stereo pair analysis, but this method cannot always capture the detail needed to identify hazards locations and accurate model inputs.