Issue:
December 2012
CC Grads Help Map Flooding Effects of Hurricane Isaac
Three CC grads had a whirlwind encounter during the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Isaac, which struck the northern Gulf Coast in late August. I had been asked to join a pilot project studying the flooding effects of the hurricane through my work using Terrestrial LiDAR (T-LiDAR) as a post-doc at the United States Geological Survey in California. T-LiDAR is a distance-measuring laser combined with precise angle encoders to measure a fully 3D map, or “point-cloud,” of the nearby area. T-LiDAR had been used successfully for investigating levee failures in New Orleans during Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the technology had shown potential for mapping flooding effects in 3D. With only…Read more