WG - Lidar - Bathymetry - Public

Hi All:  Excellent and thought-provoking discussion at yesterday's inaugural  virtual meeting.  Wearing my "academic/ASPRS and former state agency" hats there are three items that came to mind. Just a few thoughts for discussion/consideration.  Thanks ... Al

• First and foremost, the non-expert community looks to the ASPRS for guidance and I think that the suggestion of compiling a document regarding topobathy sensors and best-use applications is a great idea.  With that, though, I think that we (the ASPRS) need to be very careful and not sound like an endorsement for any particular manufacturer or sensor as we know that these are subject to very frequent change.  This may be tricky, but I think that if we can confine the "chart/table" to applications with suggested instrument specifications, that could go a long way.  
• And that brings me to my second suggestion regarding the larger, non-technical/end-user community,  especially those who will be using the topobathy data for decision/regulation making purposes, they need to establish some level of comfort among themselves and their constituants associated with the "accuracy" of the topobathy lidar.  Remember it took the better part of 10-years for the engineering community to become comfortable with topographic lidar.   They really don't care about the technicalities of TPU, VPU and the like, but rather need to have that same level of comfort that they get from a signed/sealed acoustic survey.  While they know that there is a difference when the survey report says that the SBES has a +/- 50cm accuracy vs +/- 150 cm accuracy, just want to know it with some level of comfort (=confidence) and they do not care about bar soundings, etc.
• Finally and admittedly, the agencies that have worked for are only responsible for shallow water (0 - 10m), and the end-users do not understand the difficulties/complexities associated with independent accuracy assessments in deeper water.  Xan's suggestion of an educational document (I recommend something more along the lines of a StoryMap) would go a long way to help them understand.  Again, we need to consider that the audience we need to educate is non-technical and graphs, charts, and particularly maps and diagrams (without mathematical formulas) will go along way to help them. 

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Alvan Karlin
University Of Tampa
Tampa FL
(813) 972-3531
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Thank Al!

 I was thinking at first of continuing past chart and tables with application suggestions and having a wide user base support the table to prevent any bias. Later I'd like to consider a flushed out, technical approach similar to how  Minsu and Karl supported USGS in characterizing different satellite systems. This would be where we could draw education bits from for your last two points, in terms of supporting end users, survey management, and technicians 

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Nicholas Johnson
Physical Scientist
USACE
Kiln MS
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Al,

Second read on your comment, while waiting on this group to explode, hit me different than the first time I read it. I agree on the simple explanation and charts/graphs/storymap suggesting as well. I'll chew on that some more and maybe we can find a few to work on this together as well. We're working towards a July meeting for the group and can maybe talk about this effort with the systems table.

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Nicholas Johnson
Physical Scientist
USACE
Kiln MS
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