NOAA Coastal Lidar Point Clouds for U.S. Coastal Areas

NOAA's collection of lidar projects from multiple sources, geographically focused on the coastal areas of the United States. The data consists of 3D point clouds, with each point attributed by object type, reflection intensity, and system metadata. Data is provided in both Entwine Point Tiles (EPT) and LAZ formats, using coordinate reference systems appropriate for each dataset's location.

Use Cases

• Coastal elevation modeling based on 3D point cloud data.
• Shoreline change analysis based on repeated lidar surveys.
• Flood risk and storm surge modeling based on detailed coastal topography.
• Topobathymetric mapping based on datasets using the topobathy domain profile.
• 3D visualization of coastal features based on attributed point cloud data.

Strengths

• Data is provided in a lossless, streamable octree format (EPT) for efficient access.
• Multiple vertical datums (e.g., NAVD88, PRVD02) are used to match the orthometric reference for each geographic area.
• Collection aggregates projects from many different sources and agencies, providing broad coastal coverage.

Limitations

• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Datasets are maintained in original projects, requiring care when merging due to potential inconsistencies.

Provenance

Source

NOAA, aggregating projects from many different sources and agencies.

Collection Method

Airborne lidar surveys measuring the 3-dimensional location of solid earth surfaces and objects.

Geography

Coastal areas of the United States of America, including territories like Puerto Rico and Guam.