- The 3rd Annual Wildland Fire Mitigation Conference will be in Reno April 17-19.
- Forensic applications of LiDAR technology are an important market that can be developed.
- This is another important driver for adopting industry standards.
Calling expert witnesses. The 3rd Annual Wildland Fire Mitigation Conference is being held in Reno, NV April 17 – 19, 2009. What I find interesting is the angle on this conference, and the fact that LiDAR mapping is on the agenda. This provides another important opportunity for experts in the field to seek out important, and potentially lucrative business connections.
As we all know, we live in a society where litigation is big business. Many of us wish this was not the case, but when the monetary stakes are high, so are the fees for the experts. There were over $1 billion dollars in damages at stake in the 2007 San Diego fires alone. It”s called leverage.
Many professionals tend to avoid this kind of work, but in this economy it may just be worth taking a closer look. If you prefer, think of it this way – not only can LiDAR mapping be used to support the litigation, it can also be a powerful tool to help prevent these disasters.
The rapidly approaching Spar 2009 conference has a track devoted to forensics and security, primarily from a crime scene mapping and investigation point of view, but having been involved with construction project litigation, I can assure you there are tremendous opportunities to apply the technology in that arena as well. It’s the old adage, “A picture is worth a 1,000 words”, especially when dealing with a jury. Documenting daily construction progress with laser scanning to me is an inexpensive form of liability insurance.
BTW, this just adds to the case for developing industry standards, since each sides expert’s claims will be subject to a high degree of scrutiny if you are involved with litigation.
Thoughts?
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I am not really the person to answer that question, but I can offer a few thoughts. The upcoming SPAR conference has a number of presentations relating to the use of scanning for forensic investigations. The presenters would certainly be able to provide more insight.
In general I would think that you would want to investigate forensics as a profession first, then add in scanning as it is just one of the tools that you could use.