Single Photon Geiger-Mode Lidar
After several years of significant but incremental technological developments in the LiDAR sector, the field is currently witnessing potentially revolutionary change through the introduction of Single Photon LiDAR (SPL) and Geiger-Mode LiDAR technologies. SPL / Geiger-Mode arguably provide a more efficient approach to perform high-resolution 3D mapping. They offer higher efficiency with respect to traditional linear LiDAR and additional 3D mapping capability in terms of swath width, spatial resolution, acquisition time and density of range returns.
These developments have led to National Mapping and Cadastral Agencies (NMCAs) considering a change in their production pipelines, while mapping companies are contemplating upgrading their airborne systems. However, few open datasets and experiences are available to inform such decisions, and the global geospatial community is keen to learn more about the technology and its deployment for 3D territorial mapping. These facts and considerations motivated the organization of a EuroSDR Workshop on SPL and Geiger-Mode LiDAR technology in Barcelona, Spain (6th March 2019). The one-day workshop brought together 65 researchers, developers and practitioners from the global mapping sector to discuss this new airborne laser scanning technology and the results achieved to date. 15 presentations were made, the majority of which can now be downloaded from the EuroSDR workshop webpage.
The EuroSDR lidar benchmark project is running for two years and aims to collect different datasets with the support of commercial providers in order to perform detailed investigations and analyses.