Mapping and Surveying Alaska – America’s Last Frontier
About the talk
In 2008, after an alarming number of Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) aviation accidents, the FAA was threatening to disallow commercial aviation over Alaska because the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of Alaska did not satisfy minimum safety requirements for flying under conditions of poor visibility using instrument flight rules (IFR). Because its topographic base layer was also not accurate enough to support orthorectification of aerial or satellite imagery, Alaska was the only state with no statewide digital orthophotos and had never been mapped at any scale to national mapping standards. Dewberry authored the Alaska DEM Whitepaper that proposed the use of aerial IFSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) to solve Alaska’s mapping problems and then managed the statewide IFSAR mapping. This presentation will summarize the technical and financial challenges and joys of mapping America’s Last Frontier with aerial IFSAR and the challenges in surveying IFSAR prism reflectors and statewide QA/QC checkpoints under extreme conditions, the GPS survey to determine the official elevation of Denali, the installation of a permanent survey monument on Denali to monitor potential post-glacial uplift, and a ground penetrating radar (GPR) survey to determine the depth of the ice and snow on Denali’s peak. Completed by the Dewberry team in 2020, IFSAR data has now allowed USGS’s production of the topographic base layer of US Topo maps statewide, and work is progressing in producing statewide digital orthophotos, updates to the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD), transportation and other layers of US Topo maps to be produced statewide in 2021.
About the speaker
Dr. David Maune was named the “Father of Lidar” by Lidar Magazine in 2018 after being honored as the winner of the Lidar Leader Award for Outstanding Personal Achievement by the International lidar Mapping Forum (ILMF 2018). He is a Fellow Member of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) and received the Photogrammetric Award in 2016 from ASPRS. He previously won the Talbert Abrams Grand Award from ASPRS for his pioneering research in digital photogrammetry.
Dr. Maune authored the National Height Modernization Study: Report to Congress on how to modernize the national height system in the U.S. based on GPS surveys, lidar and IFSAR – all surveyed relative to Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS). He authored or co-authored all major lidar standards, guidelines and specifications used nationwide. He edited and served as lead author for all three editions of Digital Elevation Model Technologies and Applications: The DEM Users Manual and USACE EM 1110-1-1000, Photogrammetric and Lidar Mapping. He authored the National Enhanced Elevation Assessment (NEEA) that led to USGS’ 3D Elevation Program (3DEP) based on QL2 lidar nationwide, and the Florida Statewide lidar Assessment that led to Florida’s statewide lidar program based on QL1 lidar. He was a charter member of the FGDC’s National Geospatial Advisory Committee (NGAC) and is a current member of NOAA’s Hydrographic Services Review Panel (HSRP). He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Geodetic Science and Photogrammetry from The Ohio State University; and he received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from what is now the Missouri University of Science and Technology.
At Dewberry, Dr. Maune has managed the acquisition and delivery of over 500,000 square miles of lidar and over 630,000 square miles of IFSAR; and he has managed Dewberry’s independent QA/QC of over 400,000 square miles of lidar produced by other firms.
Dr. Maune is a retired Army Colonel having last served as Director, U.S. Army Topographic Engineering Center (TEC), now named the U.S. Army Geospatial Center (AGC). In 1966, he was wounded in combat while serving as the Mapping Officer, U.S. Army Vietnam.
Background information/suggested pre-reading
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