July 8, 2014 — Optech is pleased to announce that Senior Scientist Dr. Viktor Feygels will be at the joint International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) and 35th Canadian Symposium on Remote Sensing (CSRS) in Quebec City, Canada, to assist Dr. Chuck Trees with his discussion of the current state of airborne lidar systems.

Dr. Trees, currently with NATO at the Centre for Maritime Research & Experimentation in Italy and formerly a Program Manager at NASA, will give a talk, for which Dr. Feygels is co-author, titled “Lidar as a Quantitative Observational Tool: Past, Present and Future Approaches” as part of the “Lidar Applications in Aquatic Ecosystems” session. The presentation will cover the whole timeline of lidar bathymetry, including several airborne lidar systems created by Optech such as the LARSEN-500, ALARMS, SHOALS, and today’s Optech Coastal Zone Mapping and Imaging Lidar (CZMIL), which can penetrate turbid waters better than any other airborne lidar system and survey down to 80 meters in clear conditions.

Dr. Trees invited Dr. Feygels to help answer technical questions about lidar during the discussion, as he is one of the primary scientists behind the development of the industry-leading CZMIL and its advanced HydroFusion software workflow. The presentation will touch specifically on how CZMIL integrates a lidar, hyperspectral imager, and RGB camera to produce a broad array of advanced physical and environmental deliverables automatically in post-processing with HydroFusion, and how its enlarged aperture receiver (4× bigger than previous sensors) provides enhanced bathymetry and accelerates HydroFusion data fusion results while improving quality. Those attending the symposium can head to room 2101 on July 16th from 3:40 to 4:00 pm to catch the presentation and ask Dr. Feygels their questions about CZMIL, HydroFusion, and lidar systems in general.

The full-waveform Optech CZMIL is the most field-validated airborne bathymetry and water column characterization system in the world, with five in use by government agencies performing critical work. Leveraging the comprehensive HydroFusion planning and automated processing workflow, CZMIL produces simultaneous bathymetry, water column characterization, object detection, and seafloor classification. In addition, the HydroFusion Turbid Water module has advanced algorithms that provide clear results even in muddy conditions. You can also learn more about CZMIL at Oceanology International China on September 3-5 in Booth B50 and OCEANS’14 MTS/IEEE St. John’s on September 14-19 in Booth 103.