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GeoSensing
Systems Engineering
Department
of Civil & Coastal Engineering
Faculty, staff and
students in GeoSensing Systems Engineering (GSE),
Civil and Coastal Engineering
(CCE) Department, University of Florida (UF) are participating in a multi-agency
collaborative effort to precisely map the damage done by the recent terrorist
attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon. Using a combination of
airborne laser swath mapping (ALSM), and ground based scanning laser technology,
the researchers are collecting and analyzing hundreds of millions of laser range
measurements of the precise three dimensional positions of points covering the
surface of the ground, buildings, and rubble in and around ground zero. The ALSM
data points provide broad area coverage with points spaced at one to two feet.
The ground based scanning laser measurements provide high resolution coverage,
with points spaced at the one to two inch level. When the airborne and ground
based observations are combined, they will provide the information to make three
dimensional models of the disaster sites far more detailed and accurate than has
ever before been available to recovery workers and planners. A preliminary
three-dimensional representation of the WTC site, based on ALSM data only, is
shown below. Additional images are available for viewing on the UF web site:
http://www.alsm.ufl.edu.
The University of
Florida (UF), for more than four years, has had an ongoing research program in
the application of ALSM technology to a wide variety of problems, including the
development of Digital Elevation Models (DEM) for selected urban and rural
areas. Working collaboratively with Florida International University, the UF was
the first academic institution in the United States to purchase and operate an
ALSM unit. The instrumentation cost more than $1.3 million, and was delivered to
UF in March 1999. Since then, UF researchers have completed more than 25
research projects, funded by federal agencies (NASA, NOAA, USGS FAA, DoD, and
NSF), state agencies (FDOT, FDEP, GDOT, TDOT) and local agencies (Pinellas
County, Lake County). Recently, a high resolution digital color camera was
integrated with the ALSM system to generate ortho-rectified images, for certain
research applications.
As luck would
have it, when a call came from the DoD Joint Precision Strike Demonstration (JPSD)
Group to ask if the UF could make the data collect, the UF/FIU ALSM system was
just about to be returned to the manufacturer to upgrades the laser pulse rate
from 10,000 pulses per second (pps) to 33, 000 pps, and was not operational.
After a few calls and e-mails, a team was assembled, under the leadership of
JPSD, involving resources and personnel from JPSD,UF, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Geodetic Survey (NGS), and
Optech Inc., the Canadian company that manufactured the ALSM and ground laser
instrumentation. Optech immediately made available their new generation ALTM
2033 laser system, and installed it in a Cessna Citation, operated by NOAA.
The first
observations were collected Sept. 23, 2001, twelve days after the attack. UF
personnel, dispatched to New York City, provided ground support, including
operating Global Positioning system (GPS) base stations, and rapid processing of
the observational data. An area of about ten square miles, centered on the WTC,
were mapped, and additional observations are scheduled to be collected through
September 27, under this initial emergency response effort. The UF researchers
have approval of support from the National Science
Foundation, that will include
the collection of additional laser observations, combining the ALSM and ground
based laser observations, and an in-depth analysis of the results, in the months
ahead. For more information please contact:
For more Information, please contact:
Ramesh
L. Shrestha, Professor
GeoSensing Systems Engineering
Department of Civil & Coastal Engineering
University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611
Tel:
(352) 392-4999 Fax: (352) 392-5032
email: rshre@ce.ufl.edu
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