LiDAR

LiDAR. Laser imaging and ranging. Sounds really cool and looks really cool. But what is LiDAR, and does it mean to be a LiDAR Analyst?

LiDAR stands for light detection and ranging and it's a remote sensing method where pulses of laser bouncing from the ground back to the sensor determines the distance. NOAA explains this better than I can.

From November 2022 to April 2023, I worked as a LiDAR analyst at a multifaceted geospatial firm. Multifaceted meant that we did a variety of services. This firm had surveying, GIS analysis, and LiDAR analysis services to help their clients in the power utility industry.

LiDAR is quite heavily utilized in the power utility industry for modeling transmission lines. It's fairly easy to send out a helicopter with a LiDAR sensor attached to it's bottom and fly over the lines. Then, you have the entire circuit 3D modeled! It's especially helpful to the utility companies if they plan on upgrading a specific tower or the entire line.

Even though I worked for a power utility consulting firm, LiDAR is used in other industries. It's used to do seafloor and coastal mapping to monitor coastline change. In architecture or real estate, the interior of buildings can be modeled, and you can model structural changes in a digital twin before you build it in real life. Lastly, the video game industry is very big in collecting LiDAR to create digital twins of actual cities so their environment can be modeled and played in the video game.