Data Management Plan (Deprecated)

In March 2016, Quantum Spatial (QSI) was contracted by the United States Geological Survey (USGS), in collaboration with the Washington Department of Natural Resources (WADNR), to collect Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data for the Western Washington 3DEP QL1 LiDAR project site in the state of Washington. The Western Washington 3DEP LiDAR project area covers approximately 3.5 million acres within portions of thirteen counties in the state of Washington.

Dataset Description: RAW flight line swaths were processed to create 13206 classified LAS 1.4 files delineated in 1/100th USGS Quadrangle tiles. Each LAS file contains LiDAR point information, which has been calibrated, controlled, and classified. Additional derived products include intensity images, hydro-flattened DEMs, highest hit surface models, and 3D breaklines of rivers and lakes within the study area.

Ground Conditions: Data was collected during the time when the least ground snow coverage was present in the area. Areas where snow was observed have been delineated in a provided snow polygon shapefile. Acquisition below aircraft free of smoke, fog and cloud cover.

The NOAA Office for Coastal Management (OCM) downloaded the USGS_LPC_WA_Western_North_2016_LAS_2018 and USGS_LPC_WA_Western_South_2016_LAS_2018 las files from this USGS site: ftp://rockyftp.cr.usgs.gov/vdelivery/Datasets/Staged/Elevation/LPC/Projects/ and processed the data to the Data Access Viewer (DAV). The classifications available in this data set are: 1 - Unclassified, 2 - Ground, 7 - Noise, 9 - Water, 10 - Ignored Ground, 17 - Bridge Decks , 21 - Temporal Snow, 22 - Temporal Ground, 23 - Temporal Default. Class 21, Temporal Snow, are areas which were observed to have possible snow coverage indentified during lidar acquisition. Class 22, Temporal Ground, are areas within the project area which experienced temporal change in the ground surface due to a landslide. Class 23, Temporal Default, are areas within the project area where vegetation experienced temporal change due to a landslide. See the lidar report (link provided below in the URL section) for more information about these classes.

In addition to these lidar point data, the bare earth Digital Elevation Models (DEM) created from the lidar point data are also available. These data are are available for custom download at the link provided in the URL section of this metadata record.

Hydro breaklines are also available. These data are available for download at the link provided in the URL section of this metadata record. Please note that these products have not been reviewed by the NOAA Office for Coastal Management (OCM) and any conclusions drawn from the analysis of this information are not the responsibility of NOAA or OCM.

Process Steps:

• 2017-08-31 00:00:00 - LiDAR Pre-Processing: 1. Review flight lines and data to ensure complete coverage of the study area and positional accuracy of the laser points. 2. Resolve kinematic corrections for aircraft position data using kinematic aircraft GPS and static ground GPS data. 3. Develop a smoothed best estimate of trajectory (SBET) file that blends post-processed aircraft position with sensor head position and attitude recorded throughout the survey. 4. Calculate laser point position by associating SBET position to each laser point return time, scan angle, intensity, etc. Create raw laser point cloud data for the entire survey in *.las format. Convert data to orthometric elevations by applying a geoid03 correction. 5. Import raw laser points into manageable blocks (less than 500 MB) to perform manual relative accuracy calibration and filter erroneous points. Classify ground points for individual flight lines. 6. Using ground classified points per each flight line, test the relative accuracy. Perform automated line-to-line calibrations for system attitude parameters (pitch, roll, heading), mirror flex (scale) and GPS/IMU drift. Calculate calibrations on ground classified points from paired flight lines and apply results to all points in a flight line. Use every flight line for relative accuracy calibration. 7. Adjust the point cloud by comparing ground classified points to supplemental ground control points.
• 2017-08-31 00:00:00 - LiDAR Post-Processing: 1. Classify data to ground and other client designated classifications using proprietary classification algorithms. 2. Manually QC data classification 3. After completion of classification and final QC approval, calculate NVA and VVA, and density information for the project using ground control quality check points.
• 2018-03-23 00:00:00 - The NOAA Office for Coastal Management (OCM) downloaded 13,205 (North - 7147, South - 6058) laz files from the USGS rockyftp site. The files contained elevation and intensity measurements for the project area in Washington. The data were in WA State Plane South coordinates and NAVD88 (Geoid03) elevations in feet. The data were classified as: 1 -Unclassified, 2 - Ground, 7 - Noise, 9 - Water, 10 - Ignored Ground, 17 - Bridge Decks, 21 - Temporal Snow, 22 - Temporal Ground, 23 - Temporal Default. The NOAA Office for Coastal Management processed all classifications of points to the Digital Coast Data Access Viewer (DAV). Classes available on the DAV are: 1, 2, 7, 9, 10, 17, 21, 22, 23. OCM performed the following processing on the data for Digital Coast storage and provisioning purposes: 1. The LAStools software scripts lasinfo and lasvalidate were run on the laz files to check for errors. 2. An internal OCM script was run to check the number of points by classification and by flight ID and the gps and intensity ranges. 3. Two files were found that had a single erroneous point (misplaced xy). The single erroneous point in each of the two files was removed. The files were 20160317_UGSS_LPC_WA_Western_North_2016_q48122G3212_LAS_2018.laz and 20160330_USGS_LPC_WA_Western_North_2016_q48122H1317_LAS_2018.laz 4. Internal OCM scripts were run on the laz files to convert from orthometric (NAVD88) elevations to ellipsoid elevations using the Geoid03 model, to convert from WA State Plane South coordinates to geographic coordinates, to convert from elevation units of feet to meters, to assign the geokeys, to sort the data by gps time and zip the data to database and to http.

Data is available online for custom and bulk downloads.