AIRBORNE LIDAR TECHNOLOGY
Airborne Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR), commonly called Airborne Laser Terrain
Mapping (ALTM) technology, is a cost effective, efficient method for creating high resolution
digital terrain models (DTM) and contours for transportation and environmental applications at
dramatically reduced cost and remarkable speed. The aerial photo images can be superposed on
the digital maps produced by processing raw laser data. Al-Turk and Uddin have presented a
detailed overview of the ALTM scanning head, aerial photography, and procedures of data
collection and processing (4). Figure 1 shows a typical aircraft and flight path used for laser
mapping.