Here We Go Again

After a long couple of weeks recovering from shin splints, I got back to the track this morning. I repeated the C25K Week 1 program and will do so once more before moving on to Week 2. It felt good to get moving again, especially after a couple of more or less concurrent weeks of downloading and processing LIDAR data for the main road of a new CBM pod.

LIDAR (Lignt Detection and Ranging) technology uses a laser to determine distance and elevation. For topographical purposes (what I'm using it for), the data is downloaded from what is essentially a large spreadsheet into AUTOCad, where it is then used to generate a Triangular Irregular Network (TIN), which in turn generates topographical contours. The TIN is also used to produce a road's centerline profile and generate the road's original ground cross sections; the original ground cross sections are compared to design cross sections to calculate the quantity of earthwork (cut and fill) construction of the road will require.

LIDAR is great because we can generate topography for any given spot without having to send out a surveying crew - particularly handy if additional topo is needed beyond what was originally thought necessary. The one problem with LIDAR is probably more a problem with the computers we use - the downloaded LIDAR for a given area is just too much information to use. As such, after spending hours (and hours and hours, if the project in question is big enough) downloading LIDAR into AUTOCad, we have to spend more time (not as much, but it can still be significant) thinning the data down to a manageable amount that is still acceptable for our purposes. (This made me think of the bit from South Park, wherein Jimbo and Ned explain their new justification for hunting - to thin out the numbers of local deer, rabbits, and other wildlife. "We're environmentalists!")

At this point, you're probably thinking, "Okay, that was very interesting, but so what?"

Good question. In the end, it just felt really great to get back in motion after sitting on my ass dealing with LIDAR (and more LIDAR, after finding out I needed a whole lot more when I received a fence line which was smack dab in the middle of the data I'd spent the better part of a week prepping) for the past couple weeks. Here's looking forward to more.

Thin our their numbers,
Regis