As geospatial programs increasingly support both mapping and long-term monitoring, practitioners must address new challenges in data acquisition, quality management, conflation, and product generation. This session highlights innovations in topographic mapping, lidar acquisition and processing, procurement modernization, and change detection workflows, demonstrating how evolving standards and practices are enabling more reliable, scalable geospatial programs.
10:30 AM – 10:45 AM
Multi-Scale Mapping at the USGS: OnDemand Topos and topoBuilder
Presented by Bethany Walker, U.S. Geological Survey
The U.S. Geological Survey’s topoBuilder application allows users to request and customize topographic maps, referred to as OnDemand Topos. OnDemand Topos are designed using ArcGIS Pro and generated in topoBuilder using Esri’s Topographic Production Service. Additionally, these products have highly tailored specifications that drive data management and generalization requirements which are managed using Esri workflows. This presentation provides an overview of product requirements that drive the data preparation processes and map generation logic used to create OnDemand Topos, with a special focus on elevation derivatives.
10:45 AM – 11:00 AM
Acquisition and Conflation: The Ever-Challenging Downhill Flow
Presented by Maddie Lother and Josh Novac, Dewberry
Dewberry was recently tasked with acquiring QL1 lidar over diverse and challenging landscapes covering approximately 8,300 sq miles in Alaska and 34,000 in Mississippi. Acquisition and production required specific planning to help overcome the changing environmental variables ranging from excessive flooding to extreme tidal fluctuations that resulted in multiple acquisition periods causing significant temporal challenges with the hydrographic breaklines. This presentation explores the challenges of acquisition and will examine the time-shifting temporal obstacles that arose during collection and hydrographic breakline conflation as well as the practical strategies used to overcome them. It highlights the importance of vertical variance data checks and soft features, which have become integral to the conflation process even in the absence of water control structures. We will also share the evolution of hydrographic breakline conflation methods, ranging from lidar stereo model extraction to current time-saving techniques.
11:00 AM – 11:15 AM
Redefining Wide Area and Corridor Mapping: Modernizing Aerial Survey Specifications for the Digital GNSS Era
Presented by Lamont Norman, Mapware
Wide area and corridor mapping projects are essential for transportation, utilities, energy, environmental monitoring, and critical infrastructure management. While airborne sensors, digital cameras, lidar systems, and GNSS/INS technologies have advanced significantly over the past decade, many Requests for Information (RFIs) and Requests for Proposals (RFPs) continue to rely on procurement language and technical specifications developed for earlier generations of aerial survey technology.
The result is that agencies and asset owners may unintentionally limit innovation by prescribing legacy data collection methods instead of defining the accuracy, quality, and deliverables required to meet project objectives. Modern digital aerial mapping systems now provide highly accurate positioning, orientation, and quality assurance capabilities that enable efficient collection of large-area and corridor datasets while maintaining rigorous accuracy standards. However, these capabilities are not always reflected in current procurement practices.
This presentation explores how procurement specifications can evolve to support modern digital aerial mapping workflows while remaining technology-neutral and focused on measurable project outcomes. Rather than prescribing specific equipment or manufacturers, the session examines how performance-based specifications can encourage innovation, improve competition, reduce project risk, and provide agencies with greater flexibility as mapping technologies continue to advance.
Attendees will review examples of traditional specification language, discuss opportunities to modernize aerial survey requirements, and examine practical considerations for incorporating digital GNSS/INS referencing, quality assurance methodologies, and integrated sensor workflows into future mapping procurements. Real-world examples will illustrate how focusing on required accuracy, repeatability, and documented quality metrics—rather than prescribing specific collection methods—can improve project efficiency while maintaining confidence in deliverables.
Participants will leave with practical recommendations for developing future RFIs and RFPs that better align with today’s digital aerial mapping technologies and are adaptable to future innovations across the geospatial industry.
11:15 AM – 11:30 AM
From Mapping to Monitoring: Preparing Repeat Lidar for Reliable Change Detection
Presented by Michael Oldham, NV5
We’ve spent the last two decades optimizing lidar for mapping. The next challenge is optimizing it for monitoring.
As repeat lidar acquisitions become standard practice across statewide and regional programs, agencies are increasingly expecting change detection to be more than a visualization. They are using it to support quality assurance, quantify landscape change, assess wildfire impacts, prioritize restoration, and inform critical management decisions. Today’s acquisition specifications and production workflows were largely developed to produce highly accurate snapshots in time, not necessarily datasets optimized for monitoring landscape change over time.
Developing meaningful change detection products requires more than differencing two elevation models. Acquisition geometry, sensor evolution, classification methods, environmental conditions, and processing decisions can all introduce apparent change that is unrelated to the landscape itself. As demand for operational change products grows, these factors become increasingly important to understand, communicate, and manage.
This presentation shares lessons learned from supporting large-scale repeat lidar programs and discusses practical approaches for improving the reliability and interpretability of change detection products. We will explore strategies for increasing temporal consistency, reducing sources of false change, and identifying opportunities for future acquisition and processing practices that better support long-term monitoring.
Rather than asking whether today’s datasets can support change detection, we’ll ask a broader question: What should the next generation of lidar collections look like if monitoring becomes as important as mapping?
