During my editorship, I have attempted to provide readers with material not only on lidar, but also on other active sensors, such as radar and sonar. In this issue, our annual Sensor Integration Spotlight, we’ve procured several examples of high-level integration in action. This month’s cover story recaps the manner in which the Virginia-based geospatial powerhouse Dewberry has collaborated with the renowned Italian company TRE ALTAMIRA on interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), a source of highly accurate data on elevation change. The authors begin with useful background material on lidar and InSAR, then showcase lidar’s role in complementing InSAR such that the two technologies are used in the optimum way. There’s a sidebar giving the approbation of two NOAA experts on the beauties of InSAR.
Following that thread, I have been pursuing various people for years in search of an article on ground-penetrating radar (GPR) – the use of radar sensors, usually deployed on vans or trucks, or on carts pushed by hand, to discover and map underground infrastructure such as pipes and cables. Finally, Trimble has answered my call, with an article on page 24 presenting three short case-studies demonstrating the power of systems that integrate Trimble’s MX series of mobile mapping systems with third-party GPR sensors. The positive results echo those that I reported from the recent Hexagon user meeting in Las Vegas.
On page 36, you’ll find part III of the series, “Elevations for the Nations,” by Ada Perello of EAASI, addressing lidar-related developments in Austria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, and Italy—five countries with very disparate geographies and cultures, resulting in different challenges to the creation of nationwide elevation programs. Such programs often represent the evolution of initiatives that began at the provincial level then diffused to the entire land area, the ultimate integration of sorts.
Closing out this edition, we present another installment of the “Content to Serve” column from contributing writer John Welter, revealing his thoughts on the evolution of lidar – why certain developments took place when they did. John confirms that an update of the Leica SPL100 single-photon system is imminent, so we eagerly await INTERGEO 2025 in Frankfurt in October. Adjacent technologies such as GPS and IMUs have been influential, as have UAVs and self-driving cars. The marvelous systems we deploy today have their history in both technological advances and responses to customer demand.
I count myself privileged to have attended five very different but extremely informative events this year. These are reported on our website, yet it is worthwhile to reflect. Geo Week in Denver in February1 seems a long time ago. It was vibrant and still growing, a demonstrable success on the part of Diversified Communications, with a particularly strong exhibition and decent marketing of World Lidar Day. This is the “go to” event for North American practitioners in photogrammetry, remote sensing and lidar. The 59th Photogrammetric Week in Stuttgart in April2 served up the traditional mixture of invited speakers reviewing the state of the art, short presentations by industry representatives and strong demonstrations of the latest products. The standard this year was spectacular.
PhoWo would be expected to be entirely different from Hexagon LIVE Global 2025 in Las Vegas in June, not just because the weather was 50 degrees cooler. I enjoyed the Hexagon event so much that I was unable to rein in my loquaciousness and the report stretched to four parts.3 The usual razzamatazz was there, yet there seemed to be a little more gravitas than some earlier instantiations and both the Hexagon and customer presentations were solid and sometimes inspiring. I was able to talk to the right people to go more deeply into airborne sensors, GPR, and the user of lidar in security systems.
All five events noted here are serial, i.e. they repeat annually or biennially. The Esri International User Conference in San Diego in July4 was the 45th in the series, attracting 20,000 customers from 130 countries. The big plenary on the opening day, with Jack at the podium for much of it, was as well orchestrated as ever. I was especially struck by two of the presentations I attended about soliciting public comment to proposed urban developments. There’s a lot in common between these developments, by the companies Houseal Lavigne and inCitu, working with their customers, and an article from Esri recently posted on our website about the use of a digital twin in planning by the city of Magna, Utah.5 It was abundantly clear that digital twins have already gone far beyond “posh 3D models” to working systems able to support decision-making, some of it in near-real-time. The examples of the Port of Corpus Christi and San Francisco International Airport were especially compelling.
Lastly, I’m writing this on my return home from the 15th session of the Committee of Experts on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) at the United Nations in New York.6,7 This is entirely different. Delegations from UN member states confer with a view to consensus on policies for the generation and use of geospatial data, especially the UN Integrated Geospatial Information Framework. The pursuit of the UN Sustainable Development Goals is pervasive throughout the meeting. The structure, jargon and protocols of UN-GGIM require work to understand, but progress is being made. UN-GGIM has some regional centers of expertise and the one in Bonn is making substantial progress on the “global geodesy supply chain”.
There’s a well written piece in the current issue of Photonics Spectra about underwater lidar8. Readers who enjoyed part III of Gottfried Mandlburger’s “Airborne lidar: A tutorial for 2025”9 will find the complementary information in this article valuable. The focus is a quantum lidar system from Quantum Computing. This is a single-photon lidar prototype, but the article also describes production systems such as Leica CoastalMapper, Teledyne Geospatial CZMIL SuperNova and YellowScan Navigator, which is also integrated by Volatus Aerospace on Dragonfly UAVs. The article ends with a discussion of subsea lidar, i.e. sensors mounted on remotely operated submarines. A system from 3D at Depth was used to scan the Titanic at a depth of 4000 m. Onward and downward!
1 https://lidarmag.com/2025/02/27/biggest-geo-week-ever/
2 https://lidarmag.com/2025/05/27/59th-photogrammetric-week-stuttgart-1-4-april-2025/
3 https://lidarmag.com/2025/07/15/hexagon-live-global-2025-las-vegas-16-19-june-2025-a-retrospective/
4 https://lidarmag.com/2025/08/05/esri-international-user-conference-san-diego-14-18-july-2025-a-retrospective/
5 https://lidarmag.com/2025/08/13/magna-mappa/
6 https://lidarmag.com/2025/08/15/15th-session-of-the-un-ggim-in-new-york
7 https://ggim.un.org/meetings/GGIM-committee/15th-session/
8 Schlett, J., 2025. Underwater lidar givers maritime and subsea applications the green light, Photonics Spectra, 59(7): 42-47, July 2025.
9 Mandlburger, G., 2025. Airborne lidar: A tutorial for 2025. Part III: Bathymetric lidar, LIDAR Magazine, 15(2): 20-29, Spring 2025.