NOAA Hurricane Irma Topobathy Lidar DEM: Miami to Marquesas Keys, Florida

Florida's coastal region from Miami to the Marquesas Keys is covered by this 1-meter resolution topobathymetric digital elevation model (DEM). The data were collected by Quantum Spatial, Inc. for NOAA across 85 missions between November 2018 and March 2019, covering approximately 1,381,270 acres. The final dataset consists of 300 tiled DEMs derived from classified LiDAR points for ground, bathymetric bottom, and submerged objects.

Use Cases

• Modeling coastal erosion and sediment transport based on high-resolution bare earth elevation data.
• Analyzing hurricane impact on seafloor and shoreline morphology based on integrated topographic and bathymetric data.
• Creating flood risk maps for coastal Florida based on detailed elevation models.
• Studying submerged object distribution and habitat mapping based on classified point data.

Strengths

• High spatial resolution of 1 meter per pixel for detailed terrain analysis.
• Covers a large, defined project area of approximately 1,381,270 acres.
• Integrates both topographic and bathymetric data into a single, coherent model.
• Data collection involved 85 separate missions, suggesting thorough spatial coverage.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale statistical modeling.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Airborne LiDAR data collected by Quantum Spatial, Inc. using Riegl VQ-880 systems.

Time Range

2018-11 20 to 2019-03-23

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 21:31:29.778888; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Eastern coast of Miami south and westward to the Marquesas Keys, Florida, USA.