ExpertiseOther expertiseResearch programmesMassive point clouds for esciences

Research programme

Massive Point Clouds for eSciences

Location

The Netherlands

Funding

Netherlands eScience Center - EUR 500,000

Project period

2013 - 2015

Modern geographic data acquisition technologies generate point clouds with billions (or even trillions) of elevation/depth points. Point clouds have attracted a lot of attention from other research disciplines, such as: flood modelling, dike monitoring, forest mapping, generation of 3D city models, etc. However, the main problem with these point clouds is that they are simply too big (several terabytes) to be handled efficiently by common ICT infrastructures.

A lack of tools means that available data are not being used to their full potential. Within this project, several novel and innovative eScience techniques will be developed:

  • Parallel ICT architecture,

  • New core support for point cloud data types in the spatial DBMS,

  • Web Point Cloud Service protocol (WPCS) - progressive transfer from server to client, based on multi-resolution representation,

  • Coherent point cloud blocks allowing spatial clustering & indexing, [prob. needs punctuation]

  • Point cloud compression (storage and transfer),

  • Caching strategy,

  • Exploitation of the GPU at the client side,

  • Fine-tuning of the complete system. Our work will also result in a proposal for a new Web Point Cloud

  • Service (WPCS) standard to OGC and/or ISO TC211.

Partners

  • Delft University of Technology

  • Netherlands eScience Center

  • Fugro

  • Oracle

  • Rijkswaterstaat

  • 3TU Datacentrum

Website: http://www.pointclouds.nl
Fugro Contact: Martin Kodde (M.Kodde@fugro.nl)

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