News
Jul 21, 2011
The OpenTopography team is pleased to announce the release of version 3.3 of the OpenTopography system. This release includes numerous user interface and system enhancements as well as bug fixes. The most prominent update in v 3.3 from the perspective of users and our data partners is that we've now made the "roles" of groups involved in a dataset collection more prominent. To achieve this, results displayed on the data discovery page as well as individual point cloud dataset pages now list the roles of groups involved in the dataset collection. Roles for each dataset include Funder(s),... more
Jun 24, 2011
We're pleased to formally announce the open source release of the OpenTopography-developed Points2Grid algorithm for Digital Elevation Models generation from lidar point cloud data. Points2Grid is a robust and scalable local gridding tool for processing LIDAR point cloud data to DEMs. The algorithm uses a local gridding method to compute grid cell elevation using a neighborhood defined around each cell based on a search radius provided by the user. Points2Grid offers two processing modes - in-core and out-of-core - to allow it to handle generation of rasters larger than available memory.... more
Jun 16, 2011
We are pleased to announce the release of v. 3.2 of the OpenTopography system. This is a major update that includes several new enhancements to the lidar point cloud processing system to add functionality, speed up processing, and to improve the user experience. The most visible and important feature in this release is that OpenTopography now offers digital elevation model (DEM) generation via Martin Isenburg's (LASTools) high-performance streaming Delaunay triangulation. More information about features and updates in the v. 3.2 OpenTopography release are described below.
OpenTopography v... more
Jun 8, 2011
The 8th annual Cyberinfrastructure Summer Institute for Geoscientists (CSIG'11) will be held August 8th -12th, 2011, at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California, San Diego. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the theme for CSIG'11 is "Big Data and Big Computing", reflecting the need in the geosciences for dealing with extremely large and heterogeneous observational data from a wide range of sensors and observing platforms, as well as simulation data produced by large-scale integrative models running on large computing platforms.
CSIG'11 will include presentations... more
May 21, 2011
A new Cambridge University Press book released this month highlights a wide range of research in the areas of Geoinformatics and Earth science Cyberinfrastructure. Geoinformatics, Cyberinfrastructure for the Solid Earth Sciences, G.R. Keller and C. Baru, editors, is focused on the topics of Earth science data collection and management; modeling and community computational codes; visualization and data representation; knowledge management and data integration; and web services and scientific workflows.
Two chapters in the book highlight early research, development, and production work that... more
May 7, 2011
OpenTopography is pleased to announce the release of an 80 km2 lidar point cloud dataset for the Lemhi River watershed in east-central Idaho. The 1.1 billion point dataset was collected September 24-26, 2010 by Watershed Sciences Incorporated, for Trout Unlimited and Utah State University's Ecogeomorphology and Topographic Analysis Lab. The data collection was paid for by Trout Unlimited's US Bureau of Reclamation project partner. The surveyed was designed to support conservation and restoration efforts by Trout Unlimited and others working in the Lemhi Watershed.
Bare earth terrain model... more
May 3, 2011
Due to planned power system maintenance in the SDSC machine room, servers that provide OpenTopography lidar point cloud access and processing will be down on MAy 3rd, 2011. We expect this outage to be complete by 12 pm PDT. If you have questions or concerns please contact info@opentopography.org.
Apr 27, 2011
OpenTopography is pleased to announce that lidar point cloud data for the whole Lake Tahoe Basin (941 km2) on the California/Nevada border are now available. This 12+ billion point dataset was collected by Watershed Sciences, Inc. through a contract administered by Tahoe Regional Planning Agency (TRPA) and the U.S. Geological Survey. The Tahoe LiDAR project was funded through a Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act grant program that is administered by the US Bureau of Land Management to support a range of environmental and ecological science and planning activities. At greater than... more
Apr 26, 2011
OpenTopography is pleased to announce the release of 1,556 km2 of lidar point cloud data covering the South Coast and Deschutes regions of Oregon. Totaling over 17 billion lidar returns, these data were collected through the Oregon Lidar Consortium supervised and coordinated by the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI). All DOGAMI lidar data exceed 8 pulse/m2 and thus represent some of the highest resolution public domain lidar currently available.
OpenTopography have recently signed a memorandum of understanding with DOGAMI to begin hosting lidar point cloud data... more
Mar 30, 2011
As part of OpenTopography's ongoing efforts to provide quick and reliable access to lidar data and derived products (e.g., high-resolution DEMs), our latest system update (OT v. 3.1) features a number of improvements to the data access and processing system designed to improve performance and make OpenTopography more reliable under growing processing loads.
This update features a new, and significantly more powerful processing server for DEM and derived product generation. Tests indicate that processing is now 30-40% faster with this updated hardware. In addition, OpenTopography is now... more
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