Maximising Lake Macquarie City Council’s LiDAR Dataset

As the geospatial requirements of councils continue to grow, it is crucial to have access to detailed data that provides the necessary information to allow councils to deliver the best possible ser-vice to ratepayers. To assist in achieving this more and more councils are turning to LiDAR.

“There are only few specialist organisations available who can maximise your return on investment”

Why LiDAR?

LiDAR (laser scanning from the air or the road) while it may be more expensive than aerial imagery to capture, it can provide accurate 3D survey grade information for less than 10 cents per standard house block. As we will demonstrate, the cost of LiDAR can be easily justified when compared to the time and resource costs of manually collecting data or sending surveyors into the field. LiDAR provides data that is consistent, accurate and covers large areas.

Due to the complex nature of LiDAR data, there are only a few specialist organisations available who can maximise your return on investment across multiple projects and multiple sectors of your council. Anditi is a global leader in extracting many varied datasets for engineering, assets, hydrology, environment and infrastructure from a LiDAR survey.Realising the utility of their comprehensive 2018 LIDAR dataset captured at 8-10 points per m², Lake Macquarie City Council contracted Anditi to ensure they maximise the value for money for their ratepayers

Study using Anditi’s patented algorithms and in-house feature extraction resources, we have provided the following products to Lake Macquarie City Council for the whole LGA from a single LiDAR dataset:

• High accuracy digital elevation and digital surface models with water barriers removed for flood and drainage modelling, slope analysis, sun angle, slumping potential and earthworks
• Surface water drainage networks with network hierarchy to identify areas of flow concentration
• Mapped road width and road shoulder width
• Identification of drainage pits within the entire road network
• Mapped constructed drainage canals and their profiles for width and form
• Found and characterised retaining walls on or near council land
• Data analysis to identify features that would aid Council with assessment of locations for future electric vehicle charging sites
• Mapped vegetation and tree coverage, tree high points and stratification to create data that can usefully be utilised in GIS software and analysed against other GIS data
• Identified tree based carbon storage in reserves and rehabilitated quarry areas
• Developed quarry rehabilitation plans including fill and drainage requirements

Hydrology

High accuracy DEM and DSMs for flood and drainage modelling, flow hierarchies

Roads

Mapped road and shoulder width.

Vegetation mapping

Stratification, vegetation change over time, identify carbon sequestration