Can multi-beam flash lidar provide a low-cost and accurate surveying opportunity for commercial helicopter operations?

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Vision Air Services Inc. is a commercial helicopter service provider based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Vision Air offers specialty helicopter services such as aerial surveys for environmental and wildlife research and monitoring, powerline and utility support solutions, and airborne geophysical surveys. Lidar (light detection and ranging) is a well accept technique for collecting high precision survey data for numerous applications at a high cost. Technological advances have made lidar sensors simpler, smaller, and more energy efficient resulting in technology that is available to consumers at a lower cost than in the past. Vision Air intends to be on the cutting edge of these new developments and use a new generation of multi-beam flash lidar (MBFL) sensors to offer topographic lidar surveys to their clients. MBFL offers many advantages over traditional large format systems and its incorporation into Vision Air's client services will open new markets and position the company as a more competitive business. Helicopter-mounted topographic lidar will offer a "medium format, medium cost" lidar acquisition solution to the market, filling a gap between aircraft and drone platforms, and allowing new customers across Canada access to aerial lidar. To achieve these outcomes, Vision Air requires applied research support from the Nova Scotia Community College's Applied Geomatics Research Group (NSCC-AGRG). MBFL systems are on the cutting edge of development and no operational best practices have been defined for system installation and use. Researchers at NSCC-AGRG are experts in lidar data collection, processing, and analysis and will apply their skills to this project to develop installation guidelines, customized software solutions, and will conduct performance testing and lidar data evaluation. At the close of this project, Vision Air will be positioned to immediately exploit project results by renting or purchasing a lidar sensor to offer as a unique, innovative, and low-cost service to their existing client base and many potential new clients.