The GMAP Laboratory is a group of geospatial researchers led by University of Florida professors Ben Wilkinson (Gainesville) and Amr Abd-Elrahman (UF Gulf Coast REC). GMAP specializes in high-resolution UAS mapping and remote sensing. Currently our focus is the Regional Geospatial Modeling project, an effort funded by NOAA/NGS. Our goals for this project are to collect high-resolution UAS remote sensing data to support critical research along Florida’s Gulf Coast and to develop methods to characterize coastal formation changes using UAS data.
Blog
Summer 2019: The inaugural flights
The flagship project for GMAP is the Regional Geospatial Modeling project, a cooperative effort across the Gulf states with a number of universities and institutions. We began collecting data for this project in 2019, and our first flight was in Cedar Key, Florida, to support an oyster habitat restoration project by the Wildlife Ecology & …
From 2.5D to (roughly) 2.9D
Until just a few years ago, aerial lidar was collected from relatively high altitudes using conventional aircraft. The flying-height-to-object-height ratio was pretty small, and the resulting data looked less three-dimensional than it did, as many in this field call it, 2.5-dimensional. This term is equal parts irreverent and accurate: aerial lidar did not capture well …