Show HN: High-resolution surface analysis with Lidar data

Summary

High-resolution surface analysis with LiDAR data Introduction Airborne LiDAR uses hundreds of thousands of laser pulses per second to generate detailed 3D maps, even through vegetation. With high point densities and 10 cm accuracy, it is among the most effective methods for mapping topography. Source SwissTopo The Swiss Federal Office of Topography (Swisstopo) provides a highly precise digital elevation model based on LiDAR data, called swissALTI3D. Buildings and vegetation are removed, revealing the underlying topography. The data is delivered as a GeoTIFF tiles with 2000px × 2000px resolution representing 1km × 1km areas (resolution of 0.5m). The full list of all tiles is provided here. Note Swisstopo uses the Swiss coordinates system LV95, aka. EPSG:2056. LiDAR has some interesting use cases in archaeology (Caspari, 2023), particularly for uncovering man-made structures that are hidden beneath vegetation or subtle terrain changes. It allows archaeologists to identify features such as ancient roads, walls, building foundations, and agricultural terraces that may be invisible to the naked eye or conventional aerial photography. Goal of this Project This project aims to improve accessibility to the data in two main steps: Visualize the SwissTopo data as images that highlight subtle terrain changes for easier interpretation Deploy the data in an interactive, mobile-friendly online map Currently, part of this data of eastern Switzerland (North Graubünden) is accessible on https://lidar.cubetrek.com The online map allows to quickly pan to the current location via GPS and switch between three different map layers (LiDAR, this project; Aerial View and Map View, data from SwissTopo). Points of Interest Some examples of interesting features in the covered area (North Graubünden). Note Help me extend this list! Send a pull request or mail to: contact@cubetrek.com if you know of any other interesting examples. See also the Jupyter Notebook (delta-relief-notebook.ipynb) for m...