The Florida Region of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (FL-ASPRS) and the University of Florida (UF) Geomatics Division rebranded the bi-annual “Lidar Workshops” as “Geospatial Workshops” and held the Fall workshop on 9 November 2023. The workshops continue to meet, in-person and virtually, at the Mid-Florida Research and Education Center of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and over Zoom. The workshops are open, free of charge, to all interested persons.
The event attracted 58 on-site participants and 118 virtual attendees from nine US States (Alabama, California, Colorado, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas) and universities in four countries (Greece, India, Tanzania, Taiwan). The workshops serve as both bi-annual FL-ASPRS meetings and as educational outreach to the general photogrammetry and remote sensing community. The program focuses on the three sectors in the ASPRS mission statement, “… to promote a balanced representation of the interests of government, academia and private enterprise”, with presentation sessions devoted to each. Below is a synopsis.
State and federal updates
The workshop started with 10-minute briefings from several state and federal agencies focused on Florida-based projects: South Florida Water Management District (Ken Chen), Suwannee River Water Management District (Paul Buchanan). St. Johns River Water Management District (Sandra Fox), Southwest Florida Water Management District (Nicole Hewitt), consultants for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection/Florida Seafloor Mapping Initiative (Emily Klipp and Rick Householder), Florida Coastal Mapping Program (Cheryl Hapke), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS: Xan Fredericks) and NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Karen An).
Keynote speaker
Joshua Nimetz (USGS) gave the keynote presentation, discussing the updates to the ASPRS Positional Accuracy Standards for Digital Geospatial Data.
Special guest speaker
John Nelson (Esri) provided a pre-recorded discourse, highlighting several of the new features in the Esri Living Atlas. For the remainder of his talk, John focused on using lidar-derived data and statistical techniques to make low-relief features, rather frequently found in Florida, more visually compelling.
Sponsor participants
The workshop welcomed one new platinum sponsor, Darius, four continuing platinum sponsors, Dewberry, McKim & Creed, RIEGL, and Pointerra, and four continuing gold sponsors, GPI Geospatial, NV5, TopoDot and Woolpert.
Academic presentations
The research presented included high-resolution bathymetry inversion (Sanduni Mudiyanselage, University of Florida) and satellite remote sensing for wetland mapping (Caiyun Zhang, Florida Atlantic University).
