In early 2018 ago a former colleague, Claire Trenham, asked if I was interested in proposing a chapter for a publication on ‘good data’ for some university publication she’d come across. So I said yes! We pitched a ‘Good Data Manifesto’, and it was accepted! One and a half years on, it’s in an edited…
Colouring point clouds with PDAL
Late last year I published a couple of full-RGB lidar datasets made from open data. While both had plenty of ways to generate false-colour interpretive insights (classification, elevation, intensity, flight line), seeing the data in ‘real colour’ lets us identify with it more easily. It helps us find both analytical insight and context. As an…
A small hydrographic data QA project
I recently finished a proof-of-concept project with FrontierSI for creating some building blocks aimed at scaleable, programmatic quality assurance for hydrographic surveys. It was a fantastic opportunity to work on the foundations of some huge future projects on large scale hydrographic data collection. I set out thinking ‘great, I can PDAL all the things!’ –…
A method for offline entwine EPT viewing
So you made an Entwine point tile index and want to deliver it offline as a quick demonstration? Impress your friends, enemies and frenemies like this. You need: git python3 a non-safari web browser I’m using a MacOS 10.7 machine, and therefore assume you are also. The same set of instructions should work for any…
Making the MH370 map
I had a lot of fun making the feature image for my second open source point cloud infrastructure post – and I liked the map, so I thought I’d share the recipe. Unfortunately, it took a while because I decided to make it better! I hope I succeeded – I certainly had more fun and…
Web services: NCSS and WCS
This is a blog post about work I’ve done in a past role, but I’d like to get out to a wider audience. It’s about two different web services that do similar things: NetCDF subset service (NCSS), and Web Coverage Service (WCS). I hope it also helps to act as a short guide on making…
Experiments with Anafi – and point cloud infrastructure part 3
This is both a consumer grade RPAS (remotely piloted airborne system) write-up, and part 3 of the ‘open source point cloud infrastructure’ series (see part 1 and part 2) – looking at much smaller scale data produced by consumer (and other) RPAS systems using cameras. The story starts with purchasing a tiny airplane to support…
LiDAR basics – tutorial building
I’ve just wrapped up a small job refreshing teaching materials for the Australian National University Centre for Water and Landscape Dynamics – an innovative group using remote sensing tech to address landscape-scale analysis of things that matter for assessing the state of the environment (see, for example: http://wald.anu.edu.au/data_services/data/continuous-and-comprehensive-national-environmental-reporting-australias-environment/). The task? convert a MATLAB and ArcGIS-based…
Cartocrafting
Digging deep into my my own history here, I left high school full of confidence that I would become an illustrator and spend my life drawing things for science! I didn’t make the cut for art school. And went to science instead – there’s a long story about why I didn’t just leap straight into…
An open source point cloud infrastructure part 2: oceans
If you haven’t read part 1 of this miniseries, go take a look. To really briefly summarise, it tells a short backstory about why the PDAL + Entwine needs to be on the radar for anyone considering massive point-cloud based data management; and provides a couple of terrestrial examples. Here, we tackle hydrography. The GEBCO…