There is an increasing demand for national and regional scale elevation data for use in environmental modelling and spatial analysis to support environmental policy development and implementation. Digital elevation data and derived products such as digital elevation models (DEM) are important components in national and regional spatial data infrastructure. To support sustainable development and resource management at a catchment scale, the improvement and update of existing DEMs or, alternatively, the development of a new high-accuracy and high-resolution DEM has been identified as a priority by many catchment management authorities. Recently, it has been shown that the deployment of airborne LiDAR (light detection and ranging) systems offers a way to acquire high-density and high-accuracy terrain data. LiDAR data promise to become one of the major sources of digital terrain data, and may become the primary choice for the updating of catchment-scale DEMs. The DEM requirements at catchment scale are diverse and refer to many identified natural resource issues, including drainage systems, groundwater, lakes and wetlands, water quality, landslides, salinity, and biodiversity. The overall objective of this research is to investigate the ways of processing the airborne LiDAR data for high quality DEM generation in terms of both accuracy and efficiency and explore the applications of LiDAR data at catchment scale.

Dr Xiaoye Liu

• Dr Zhenyu Zhang

• International Centre for Applied Climate Sciences
• School of Engineering and Built Environment

• Environmental Science and Management
• Geomatic Engineering
• Other Environmental Sciences

• Doctor of Philosophy (DPHD)
• Master of Research (MRES)
• Master of Research (MRES)