Project: Survey, by optimizing a laser scanner, a storm outflow and its erosion effects on the banks of a river.
Purpose: To create existing contours to be used in grading design.
A laser scanner is a wonderful tool to access areas that might be hazardous to a traditional land surveyor. This storm outflow pipe is surrounded by steep loose rock, too dangerous to be walking around on. There was also a time factor involved as well. Laser scanning allowed us to survey the entire area in about 90 minutes, being able to capture 20,000 measurements a second.
The scans were processed, registered and georeferenced to ground control. From the scans a TIN was created, from which the contours were acquired. The entire process took about half a day.
Equipment and Software used: FARO Focus, sphere targets, ReCap, Cyclone, and Civil 3D.
Above: Raw point cloud data from a single scan
Below: Processed point cloud of multiple scans registered
Above: TIN created fron point cloud
Below: Final cleaned-up mesh
Above: Created surface contours and map
Westlake Consultants
Jerry W. Dawson
Senior Survey Tech / Laser Scanning
