This is an updated version of the document published in October 2025.

National mapping agencies are acquiring point cloud datasets across Europe. In 2023, together with the European Association of Aerial Surveying Industries in 2024, the Joint Research Centre attempted to provide an overview of the current state of these datasets. As data acquisition in Europe is ongoing, acquisitions and datasets vary. Intending to create a harmonised dataset within each nation, uniformity in data acquisition is crucial for shareability.

Rijkswaterstaat, TU Delft, Het Waterschapshuis, and EuroSDR invited EuroSDR members to complete the questionnaire in 2024 to identify the different ‘dialects’ in European point cloud acquisition programmes. The questionnaire results served as a starting point for the desk study to identify all publicly available point cloud datasets in Europe.

The questionnaire and the desk study results provide valuable insight into the current steps towards a pan-European point cloud dataset, revealing the minor variations between datasets across three primary quality parameters: spatial distribution, absolute and relative accuracy. The harmonisation of quality descriptors as defined in specifications should lead to fewer European ‘dialects’ concerning point cloud datasets, thereby paving the way for collaborative datasets at national and pan-European scales.