Evaluation of a LIDAR Land-Based Mobile Mapping System for Monitoring Sandy Coasts.docVIP

Remote Sens. 2011, 3, 1472-1491; doi:10.3390/rs3071472 OPEN ACCESS Remote Sensing ISSN 2072-4292 /journal/remotesensing Article Evaluation of a LIDAR Land-Based Mobile Mapping System for Monitoring Sandy Coasts Maja Bitenc 1,*, Roderik Lindenbergh 2, Kourosh Khoshelham 2 and A. Pieter van Waarden 3 1 Geodetic Institute of Slovenia, Jamova 2, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia 2 Department of Remote Sensing, Delft University of Technology, Kluyverweg 1, 2629 HS Delft, The Netherlands; E-Mails: r.c.lindenbergh@tudelft.nl (R.L.); K.KhoshElham@tudelft.nl (K.K.) 3 Dutch Ministry of Public Works and Water Management, Data ICT Dienst, Derde Werelddreef 1, 2622 HA Delft, The Netherlands; E-Mail: pieter.van.waarden@rws.nl * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: bitenc.m@; Tel.: +386-1-200-29-00; Fax: +386-1-425-06-77. Received: 1 April 2011; in revised form: 2 June 2011 / Accepted: 22 June 2011 / Published: 8 July 2011 Abstract: The Dutch coast is characterized by sandy beaches flanked by dunes. Understanding the morphology of the coast is essential for defense against flooding of the hinterland. Because most dramatic changes of the beach and the first dune row happen during storms, it is important to assess the state of the coast immediately after a storm. This is expensive and difficult to organize with Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS). Therefore, the performance of a Land-based Mobile Mapping System (LMMS) in mapping a stretch of sandy Dutch coast of 6 km near the municipality of Egmond is evaluated in this research. A test data set was obtained by provider Geomaat using the StreetMapper LMMS system. Both the relative quality of laser point heights and of a derived Digital Terrain model (DTM) are assessed. First, the height precision of laser points is assessed a priori by random error propagation, and a posteriori by calculating the height differences between close-by points. In the