Well, thanks to Tina Carey it appears that at least one group is researching the possible benefits of using massive clusters of computers – the Cloud to process LiDAR data. The SDSC – the San Diego Supercomputer Center has received funding from the National Science Foundation. Described as “massive spatial data sets”, they are high-resolution topographic data obtained with airborne LiDAR.
I understand that one industry insider when asked about the potential benefits of leveraging the Cloud did not believe that it made sense for most of today’s workflows. In any case I am just relieved to know that the 3D laser scanning industry is somehow linked to the Cloud.
Thanks for taking note of this project. The fundamental goal of the research is to compare cloud-based data management, access, and processing strategies to database systems. We are specifically focused on large, community-oriented, scientific data sets. LiDAR is an interesting test case because of the data volumes and on-demand access our users require, but ultimately the strategies developed in this work could be applied to all types of scientific data. More information on the project is available here: http://www.opentopography.org/index.php/cloudstor/
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[…] the raw data up and down are too prohibitive. While reading Gene Roe’s blog, I came across this reference to a plan at the San Diego Supercomputer Center to do LiDAR processing in the cloud – does anyone […]