SGER: US/China Digital Government Collaboration: A New Tool for Economic and Environmental Planning - Expanding the Boundaries of LiDAR

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Background:This small grant will support an initial collaboration with a Chinese reseaercher on the topic of LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) and its use in flood disasters. LiDAR is an active sensor approved by the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for construction of digital terrain models (DTMs) and digital elevation models (DEMs). DTMs and DEMs, together with appropriate GIS data, are key sources for the construction of digital flood insurance rate maps. FEMA-specified LiDAR products are primarily designed for terrestrial floodplain mapping applications. In this project, the collaborative work focuses on multispectral data aggregation and 3D visualization. Data from New Orleans and from Hefei China will be integrated. The goal of the research is to answer the following question: Can 3D models be generated and related strategic planning questions answered; i.e., given a flood stage, can the flooded area be visualized, can possible breaching locations be identified, and can elevations of water around building footprints be determined? The China/US team plan two tasks to address these questions. First, a method will be developed to render photogrammetric and processed images over the ?surface? of the reconstructed 3D model from LiDAR data. The second task will be to develop an integrated visualization tool.Intellectual Merit: Fusing sensory data from such vastly different modalities using signal-levelmethods is challenging. The collaborative research with the Chinese partner will result in a new product that provides a powerful and straightforward tool for disaster planning and response teams to estimate or evaluate environmental and economic impacts. Finally, LiDAR data itself will become a much more valuable tool for the communities that possess it. This multi-disciplinary research team includes three computer scientists and an environmental engineer.Broad Impacts: The research contributes to scholarship and public policy in three significant ways:1. the results will demonstrate methods which are available for quantifying present and past floodplain states using extant data. It is expected that this will be useful to state and federal agencies responsible for environmental assessment and remediation.2. research ties between China and the US will be strengthened. 3.there is the possibility of more accurate assessment of tax liabilities by all jurisdictions.