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12 October 2009

OS 3D Laser Map - Most Accurate Mapping Ever

The national agency used state-of-the-art laser technology and aerial imagery to create what it claims is one of the most accurate maps every produced.

"Ordnance Survey says that the results are substantially more accurate than the 3D maps available through online applications such as Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth, and will revolutionise the way it charts the British Isles."

Video of Bournemouth's Seafront attractions



The Good News:

“Given the level of detail that we've [ordnance survey] achieved, I think Bournemouth can confidently lay claim to being the best mapped place on the planet.”
Glen Hart, head of research at Ordnance Survey

The Bad News:

The 3D mapping service will not be rolled to the rest of Britain for at least five years, while Ordnance Survey perfects the new method. The black dots in the video represent points where no laser data was obtained.

Full article and source:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6308577/Ordnance-Survey-3D-map-of-Bournemouth-is-most-detailed-ever.html

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3 Comments:

At Monday, October 12, 2009 7:13:00 pm, Blogger Tomasz said...

well,well,well, what do we see here? a point cloud! just think how close that is to photosynth and thinking about that further what happens when the two get combined

 
At Tuesday, October 13, 2009 2:51:00 am, Blogger Morten Nielsen said...

Personally I wouldn't consider 700 mio random points with color as "mapping". It's more like raw data.

It's like saying you mapped a street after you measured a set of points. Not until you connect the dots is it a street. Until you do that, they are just "random" dots. It's not until they are connected that they show the direction of the road and you can start using it for analysis, routing etc.

Similar here, the city has not been mapped until the points has been assigned to surfaces, and the surfaces assigned to objects (building, tree, terrain etc). As far as I can tell in the video, this is just a "dumb" point cloud with RGB values. How would you perform a line-of-sight analysis, remove a building, do shadow studies etc?

I've been working numerous times with these point clouds, and they are rather unusuable until you get the data properly digested. While the data set looks cool, its basically just unusable.

 
At Friday, January 15, 2010 4:43:00 am, Anonymous deltaman said...

i just came across your blog and its a great read. laser mapping is not new to me and the technology is really getting better and better. nice work!

 

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