Data Management Plan

In August 2017, Quantum Spatial (QSI) was contracted by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to collect Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data for the Olympic Peninsula 3DEP QL1 LiDAR project site in the state of Washington. The Olympic Peninsula 3DEP LiDAR project area covers approximately 3.4 million acres ( 5,352 square miles) in northwestern Washington split into four areas. The target point density for each study area is ≥8.0 points/m^2 (0.74 points/ft^2).

Ground Conditions: Acquisition below aircraft free of smoke, fog and cloud cover. Ground Control Points were acquired and calibrated by Quantum Spatial, Inc.

Tidal Conditions: The Olympic Peninsula project area is bounded by miles of coastline and includes many tidally influenced lakes and river deltas. Since the project was acquired over many months, it is expected that there is data captured at varying tide levels which lends issues to the hydroflattening process. To accommodate these tidal and temporal differences, it is not uncommon to "stair-step" the flattened water surface to most accurately reflect the different missions in the project while capturing as much ground as permitted. Please reference section C.1.c.(ii).(d) of the task order and the Hydroflattening section of the USGS LiDAR Base Specification, V. 1.2 for more information. Task Name: WA Olympic Peninsula LiDAR 2017 B17, USGS Contract: G16PC00016, Task Order: G17PD00827

Process Steps:

• 2019-04-25 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 geoid correction. 5. Import raw laser points into manageable blocks 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.
• 2019-04-25 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.
• The NOAA Office for Coastal Management (OCM) downloaded this data set from this USGS rockyFTP website. The number of files downloaded and processed was 11,592. The data were in Washington State Plane South (NAD83 CORS96) coordinates and NAVD88 (Geoid03) elevations with all units in US Survey Feet. The data were classified as: 1 - Unclassified, 2 - Ground, 7 - Low Noise, 9 - Water, 10 - Ignored Ground, 17 - Bridge Decks. OCM processed all classifications of points to the Digital Coast Data Access Viewer (DAV). OCM performed the following processing on the data for Digital Coast storage and provisioning purposes: 1. An internal OCM script was run to check the number of points by classification and by flight ID and the gps and intensity ranges. 2. 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 Washington State Plane South (NAD83 CORS96) coordinates in US Survey Feet to geographic coordinates, 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 bulk or custom downloads

Data is backed up to tape and to cloud storage.