A New Approach for Assessing Lidar Data Accuracy for Corridor Mapping Applications

There is a growing demand for high-accuracy elevation data collected by airborne or terrestrial mobile lidar systems in utility corridor surveys. Large-scale projects demand more stringent accuracy of lidar data under strongly variable survey conditions challenging lidar signal detection capability with extremely wide signal dynamic range. While accuracy specifications are provided by the lidar system manufacturers, translating these specifications to real-world achievable accuracy and evaluating it against existing mapping accuracy standards is a challenge left to the end user. In this paper we present a new cost-effective approach for evaluating lidar data accuracy for linear target detection. The practical application of this approach is demonstrated by assessing accuracy of the lidar data collected in airborne power line surveys. The demonstrated approach could be modified and applied for accuracy analysis of the geo-referenced lidar data collected by either airborne or mobile terrestrial lidar system for various corridor mapping applications.