Grant: Engage Grants Program

Lidar (light detection and ranging) is a remote sensing technology that maps 3D terrain and landcover at high-resolution. Canada has pioneered the commercialization of this technology, while Alberta has been proactive in adopting Lidar to support province-wide mapping. Public and private sector stakeholders cannot fully exploit and share Lidar data due to a lack of web based GIS inventories and service portals. GranDuke Geomatics possess expertise in developing customized online spatial data management and analysis workflows within cloud computing environments. GranDuke is pro-actively developing large-scale, web-GIS services as part of its business sustainability model. The University of Lethbridge and GranDuke will partner to develop a scalable cloud-based portal for public and private sector Lidar data management, analysis and visualization. By providing online management, manipulation and visualization services, GranDuke will greatly expand the market for Lidar data within Canada by increasing the efficiency of existing client workflows and by opening up the market to the high-frequency small-volume client demographic that currently cannot access these data and tools.