NCALM

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The mission of the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) is to:

Provide research quality airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) observations to the scientific community.
Advance the state of the art in airborne laser mapping.
Train and educate graduate students with knowledge of airborne mapping to meet the needs of private industry, government agencies and academic institutions.

The Center is based at the University of Houston and is operated in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley. NCALM is supported by the National Science Foundation and is associated with the multi-disciplinary Geosensing Systems Engineering and Science graduate program at the University of Houston.

UH Now Accepting Nominations For Annual Slatton and Frankel Awards

Nominations are invited for the
Kenneth Clinton "Clint" Slatton Award
sponsored by
University of Houston and Optech Inc.

To recognize creative and innovative research exploiting airborne LiDAR, multi-scale estimation, data fusion, and statistical signal processing, for scientific, engineering, military, and management applications. The award consists of $1000 and a plaque.

Closing date: Nominations must be received and validated by 1 June, 2013
Official Nomination Form HERE

Nominations are invited for the
Kurt L. Frankel Award
sponsored by
University of Houston and Riegl USA Inc.

To recognize creative and innovative research exploiting airborne LiDAR and other data, such as cosmogenic dating, for geological and geophysical research in tectonic geomorphology, or closely related specialties. The award consists of $1000 and a plaque.

Closing date: Nominations must be received and validated by 1 June, 2013
Official Nomination Form HERE

Additional information and instructions for both awards can be found HERE.

Nominations are to be submitted by email to Laura Murphy: lamurphy@uh.edu.

Glennie Wins ASPRS Talbert Abrams Award

Assistant professor Craig Glennie, is the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Grand Award recipient of the 2013 Talbert Abrams Award for his paper titled "Calibration and Kinematic Analysis of the Velodyne HDL-64E S2 LiDAR sensor," published in Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing. The award was presented at the ASPRS Annual Conference in Baltimore, MD on March 26th, 2013.

Geosensing Systems Engineering Student Awarded the AAGS Fellowship

Darren Hauser, a M.S. student in the Geosensing Systems Engineering program at the University of Houston, is the recipient of the 2012 American Associate for Geodetic Surveying (AAGS) Graduate Fellowship Award. Click here to view the announcement. Darren's research involves the development of a small, affordable mobile LiDAR unit deployable on a backpack as well as terrestrial and airborne vehicles. Congratulations, Darren!

NCALM LiDAR Data Included in a PBS NewsHour Science Clip

PBS NewsHour reviewed current research into the effects of dam removal on New Hampshire's Ashuelot River. Data collected by NCALM plays an integral role. Click here to watch the video clip.

NCALM Featured in US News & World Report Science

US News & World Report Science is featuring an online article with Dr. William Carter about NCALM and the current and future impacts of LiDAR technology. Download a PDF of the article here.

UH NCALM/Geosensing Systems Engineering Hires a New Professor

Dr. Saurabh Prasad joins the NCALM center and the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department as an assistant professor. Dr. Prasad earned his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering at Mississippi State University in 2008. He was an assistant research professor at the Geosystems Research Institute (GRI) and an adjunct assistant professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Mississippi State University from January 2009 through December 2011. At Mississippi State University, Dr. Prasad was the technical lead on several projects funded by NASA, NGA and DHS as a PI/Co-PI.

Dr. Prasad's research interests include statistical pattern recognition and adaptive signal processing with applications to automatic target recognition and land cover classification for hyperspectral remote sensing. In particular, his current research entails the use of information fusion techniques for designing robust statistical pattern classification algorithms for hyperspectral remote sensing.

NCALM Shallow Water Bathymetry System - Now Available

The National Science Foundation supported National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) contracted with Optech Inc, to develop a first generation high pulse rate green (532 nm) wavelength LiDAR sensor. The new green sensor, designed to operate with the electronics rack from the nearIR Gemini system currently used by NCALM, is capable of acquiring bathymetric data at pulse rates up to 70 kHz, with full return waveform digitization, in water depths up to 10 meters (assuming the diffuse attenuation coefficient of the water is less than 0.1/m, and the bottom reflectivity is >10%). At a flying height of 300 meters, the nominal outgoing pulse density is 10 points per square meter, with a 30 centimeter spot diameter on the water surface. This represents a significant improvement in horizontal spatial resolution over existing off-the-shelf commercial LiDAR bathymetry systems. Assembly of the new sensor was completed in June 2011, and factory performance and system shake-down flight testing are currently underway. NCALM is interested in collaborating with the scientific community in research applications that would benefit from high density and accuracy shallow water bathymetry.

Optech Aquarius

Pulse Rate: 70 kHz
Scan Frequency: 0 - 70 Hz
Wavelength: 532 nm
Beam Divergence: 1 mrad
Field of View: 0 - 50°
Flight Altitude: 300 - 500 m