Airborne laser scanning—present status and future expectations

Airborne laser scanning represents a new and independent technology for the highly automated Ž . generation of digital terrain models DTM and surface models. Its development goes back to the 1970s and 1980s, with an early NASA system and other attempts in USA and Canada. Then, the GPS solution of the critical positioning problem made high accuracy performance feasible. Thorough investigations at Stuttgart University from 1988–1993 with a laser profiler proved the high geometric accuracy potential, especially for DTM generation, and clarified the essential system parameters. The scene was set for the development of genuine scanning systems, which then followed in quick sequence. The method has successfully established itself within a few years, and quickly spread into various practical applications. In this issue of the ISPRS journal, a number of technical and application papers display the status and performance of airborne laser scanning. Here, in this paper, some additional considerations are submitted on the potential further development and application of the method. Naturally, these will be personal views.