How Eagle Mapping makes the point cloud the star of every delivery
Eagle Mapping has done photogrammetry and classification work in British Columbia since 1985, and has been flying LiDAR since 2007. Every delivery included the point cloud, but clients usually worked from contours and elevation models instead, because point cloud files were too large for their computers to open. Those point clouds are now hosted on LumiDB, where a 500 GB dataset opens in a browser with nothing to download.
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Eagle Mapping is an aerial survey and mapping company in Langley, British Columbia, flying its own aircraft over mining, forestry, engineering, and energy projects across North and South America. A delivery goes out as a bundle: the LiDAR point cloud, plus the DEMs, DSMs, contours, orthophotos, tile layouts, and boundaries built from it. Matt Aquin is the IT Manager there, and he led the search for a better way to hand off that data.
The challenge
The most valuable part of the delivery was the hardest one to open
The point cloud holds everything the survey captured, down to individual branches, power lines, and easement edges. Everything else in the bundle is a simplification, and it is the only file clients can use to build their own derivatives.
It was also the file clients struggled with most. The LAS and LAZ tiles were too large for their computers to open, so the company started cutting tiles down to 250 meters or smaller just to get them to load. The alternative was to generalize: send a DEM, a DSM, or contours and let the client work from those.
Derivatives are easier to work with, so clients defaulted to them, and months later the point cloud often had not been opened at all. One client built a DEM from contours, not realizing a DEM was already in the delivery, and not knowing that the ground classification in the LiDAR would have let them build exactly the model they wanted.
Hardware is part of it. Rendering a point cloud at full density requires GPU and VRAM capacity that most client teams cannot justify buying, and prices have not been moving in their favor. At the same time, governments are putting LiDAR online in volume, through 3DEP in the United States and a province-wide collection in British Columbia. Both give you an index of tiles to download and no way to look at the data first. Aquin saw a service the company could offer on top of its own captures.
The solution
The client opens the point cloud before anything gets downloaded
Aquin evaluated several platforms first. Most have been in development for years and have feature sets to match--built for zooming down to ground level and walking or driving through a dataset, priced accordingly. That was more than Eagle Mapping needed.
Data residency decided it. Aquin did not want client data exposed to the US CLOUD Act, and LumiDB stores its data in Ireland, which met the requirement. Being able to move onto the company's own cloud later, if a project ever demands it, mattered as a backstop.
The point cloud now goes to LumiDB with the rest of the delivery. The client gets a link and a permission level, opens it in a browser, and moves through the whole capture at the density it was flown.
The results
Seeing the data no longer takes CAD software and a powerful workstation
Clients can view the whole capture at full density, instead of relying on a five-meter grid or contour interval. All a client needs is a browser, so CAD licenses and graphics cards stop being a prerequisite for viewing their data. Clients who have received deliveries this way like having the data online.
It also increases the long-term value of a delivery. A dataset that stays accessible is one a client can add to, so a capture from 2014 and a refresh five years later sit in the same project. Aquin uses the compare slider to check one against the other, including calibration between sensors. For a company that reflies the same ground for the same clients, each delivery builds on the last.
Want your clients working in the point cloud rather than a derivative of it?
We work with survey companies that want to hand over live, full-fidelity data instead of files their clients cannot open, and with teams delivering across repeat captures and multiple sensors.
Start a trial to see how LumiDB fits your delivery workflow.
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