Data Management Plan

This project was delivered to the Office for Coastal Management for use and dissemination on the Digital Coast. These files contain classified topographic and bathymetric lidar data as unclassified valid topographic data (1), Valid bathymetric data (reclassed to 11) and valid topographic data classified as ground (2). Classes 1 and 2 are defined in accordance with the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) classification standards. These data were collected by the Coastal Zone Mapping and Imaging Lidar (CZMIL) system. CZMIL integrates a lidar sensor with topographic and bathymetric capabilities, a digital camera and a hyperspectral imager on a single remote sensing platform for use in coastal mapping and charting activities. Native lidar data is not generally in a format accessible to most Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Specialized USACE and commercial software packages are used to process the native lidar data into 3-dimensional positions that can be imported into GIS software for visualization and further analysis.

This data was provided to the NOAA Office for Coastal Management (OCM) for data distribution from the Data Access Viewer (DAV) and https. In addition to these lidar point data, the bare earth Digital Elevation Models (DEM) created from the lidar point data are also available. These data are available for custom download at the link provided in the URL section of this metadata record.

Lineage Statement:
The USACE collected, processed, and provided the data to the NOAA Office for Coastal Management (OCM). OCM received the data and processed it to be available for custom download from the Data Access Viewer (DAV) and for bulk download from https.

Process Steps:

• 2014-05-05 00:00:00 - These data were collected using the CZMIL system. It is owned and operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). The system collects topobathy lidar data at 10 kHz and RGB imagery at 2 Hz. A CASI-1500 hyperspectral line scanner is integrated with the system as well. Aircraft position, velocity and acceleration information are collected through a combination of Novatel and POS A/V 510 equipment. All raw data streams are transferred to the office for downloading and processing in CZMILs Hydro Fusion software. Aircraft position data are processed using POSPac software and the results are combined with the lidar data to produce 3-D positions for each lidar shot. Upon inspection and QA/QC in the software packages Fledermaus and PFM_ABE, anomalous data are flagged as invalid. PFM_ABE software then converts all valid data from ellipsoid to orthometric heights based on the NGS GEOID12A model and exports valid lidar data as a series of unclassified LAS files.
• 2014-05-28 00:00:00 - LAS files are imported into GeoCue V2012.1.27.7, which is a geospatial workflow production and management software tool employed by JALBTCX to perform and monitor production of data products. Upon import into GeoCue, a customized classification macro, built upon the TerraScan V13 module within Microstation V8i, classifies valid topobathy data as ground points (2) and unclassified points (1), and valid bathymetric points (29). Upon completion the macro, the classification results undergo quality control and any misclassified points are manually edited. In areas of dense vegetation the bare earth ground points might be incorrectly classified due to the inability of the laser to penetrate the canopy and reach the bare ground. In these areas, JALBTCX defaults to the algorithms ground surface instead of manually reclassifying those points. They are partitioned into a series of 5km or quarter quad delivery boxes, one Classified LAS file per box. The format of the file is LAS version 1.2. Data are classified as 1 (valid non-ground topographic data), 2 (valid ground topographic data), and 29 (valid bathymetric data).
• 2014-07-22 00:00:00 - The NOAA Office for Coastal Management (OCM) received the topographic/bathymetric files in LAS format from USACE. The files contained lidar easting, northing, elevation, intensity, return number, etc. The data was received in Geographic Coordinates (decimal degrees). The vertical coordinates were referenced to NAVD88 in meters using the Geoid12a model. OCM performed the following processing for data storage and Digital Coast provisioning purposes: 1. This project is the combination of four separate directories meeting the same specifications. The entire American portion of Lake Erie was delivered to the Digital Coast. There are areas without bathymetry as they do not span the entirety of the project. 2. LAS files were reclassified from Class 29 points (USACE provided bathymetry) to Class 11 (OCM stored bathymetry) as this fit the OCM DAV classification scheme.

This data can be obtained on-line at the following URL:

https://coast.noaa.gov/dataviewer/#/lidar/search/where:ID=3667;