Pre-Hurricane Ian Coastal Lidar Survey of Naples to North Port, Florida

From February 4 to May 16, 2022, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration collected topobathy lidar data covering approximately 828 square miles along the shores of Fort Myers, Florida. The data consist of 8,928 individual 500-meter by 500-meter tiles in LAS 1.4 format, with points classified into categories including ground, water surface, bathymetric bottom, and submerged objects. This survey was conducted prior to Hurricane Ian using a Chiroptera airborne system.

Use Cases

• Modeling coastal erosion and storm surge impacts based on pre-hurricane elevation and bathymetry data.
• Creating high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) for coastal zones based on classified ground and water surface points.
• Analyzing seafloor topography and submerged features for nautical charting based on bathymetric bottom and submerged object classifications.
• Assessing changes in shoreline and nearshore morphology by comparing this pre-event dataset with post-storm surveys.

Strengths

• Data covers a substantial area of approximately 828 square miles.
• Includes 8,928 individual, consistently sized tiles (500m x 500m) for manageable processing.
• Points are classified into specific categories (e.g., ground, water surface, bathymetric bottom) per project specifications.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for specific computational tasks.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Collected via airborne Chiroptera lidar system.

Time Range

2022-02-04 to 2022-05-16

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 21:03:59.928620; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Coastal region from Naples to North Port, Florida, USA, specifically the shores of Fort Myers.