CartoData Receives the First North American Delivery of a RIEGL VQ-1460
CartoData, located in Jalisco, Mexico, has become the first professional survey firm in North America to take delivery of the RIEGL VQ-1460 airborne laser scanner. This new sensor model collects high-density, high-accuracy LiDAR point clouds and imagery for intake into CartoData’s proprietary production workflows and web mapping platform optimized for urban planning and smart city applications. Latin America has a history of challenges related to urban planning and an abundance of rural settlements, leading CartoData to embark on a path of Cartomorphosis with local and state governments to modernize the current cadastral framework. The RIEGL VQ-1460 will be central to that effort moving forward.
CARTODATA’S VQ-1460 WIDE-AREA LASER SCANNER INSTALLED IN A CESSNA 206 SINGLE-ENGINE AIRCRAFT.
CartoData recently completed a 1,500-kilometer mapping project in El Salvador with the RIEGL VQ-780 II airborne laser scanner. With the addition of the RIEGL VQ-1460, CartoData is expanding its scope of work and increasing its collection level of detail and production efficiency. The key to this is the extended range and point density performance available from the VQ-1460, which enables high-definition data sets that are exploitable by AI. CartoData acquires imagery and LiDAR simultaneously for all missions. The VQ-1460 now tilts the scale on LiDAR favor, as the new density and pattern crunched by AI allows for automatic or semi-automatic extraction of DEMs, vegetated areas, infrastructure elements, and many other layers with unprecedented assertiveness over stereo compilation operators.
DATA WAS COLLECTED BY CARTODATA AND CLASSIFIED BY AI IN EL SALVADOR WITH RIEGL LIDAR FOR SMART CITY URBAN PLANNING.
“It’s not only the 4.4 million pulses per second, but also the regular pattern and the highest laser power in the market today that enables high altitude missions with a level of detail never seen before.” said Felix Audirac, CEO for CartoData. “This capacity empowers our technological offer, offering wide-area surveys at a detail achievable previously only available with lower altitude acquisitions. The VQ-1460 is an enabler for AI LiDAR applications.”
Two Years and 100,000 Square Kilometers
Looking to the future, CartoData aims to fly over 100,000 square kilometers with its new RIEGL airborne system for country-wide mapping across Latin America. CartoData completed the first 8,000 square kilometers at the time of this writing with incredible results. The examples below show the point densities achieved at flying heights above ground of 1,300 m. and 2,600 m.
LOW ALTITUDE FLIGHT, 1,300 M AGL WITH A DENSITY OF OVER 100PTS/M2, CLEARLY SHOWING URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE.
HIGH ALTITUDE FLIGHT 2,300 M. AGL WITH A DENSITY OF OVER 20PTS/M2 ALLOWS HIGHLY ASSERTIVE CLASSIFICATIONS, WHICH ARE ONLY ATTAINABLE AT LOWER ALTITUDES WITH EARLIER SENSORS. NOTICE THE MOUNTAINS IN THE BACKGROUND.
“We have been very impressed with CartoData’s leadership and support of cadastral modernization in Latin America,” said Michael Sitar, RIEGL USA’s Division Manager for Airborne Laser Scanning. “With their investment in the VQ-1460 and the first delivery of RIEGL’s next-generation LiDAR sensor platform for area and city mapping, we are proud to support their ongoing efforts in this challenging environment.”
CartoData has been leaving its mark in the region and impacting towns and cities’ transformation with highly accurate mapping data on the path to Smart Cities and strategic Urban Planning.
Below are a couple of highlighted articles spotlighting how CartoData and RIEGL are making significant regional impacts.
Cartomorphosis: Starting with Cadastre
CartoData has implemented its Cartomorphisis framework at different levels in over 63 municipalities and two countries, including El Salvador, to design a smart city.
Read more in the following article: Cartomorphosis: an evolution that starts with Cadastre | GIM International (gim-international.com)
El Salvador Maps Project
Through the National Registry Center (CNR), the government of El Salvador is embarking on a large-scale project to map the complete country, and the entire dataset was made available to the cadastral office and the rest of the municipal areas through eCarto, CartoData’s web mapping platform.
Read more in the following article: How El Salvador is empowering growth and efficiency through mapping | GIM International (gim-international.com)
