Skip to main content

Laser mapping speeds up survey measurement

British scanning company 3D Laser Mapping is hoping to benefit from a £3 million ($5 million) fund announced recently by the UK government for police forces to purchase laser scanning technology for accident recording and investigation.
February 21, 2012 Read time: 2 mins
British scanning company 1639 3D Laser Mapping is hoping to benefit from a £3 million ($5 million) fund announced recently by the UK government for police forces to purchase laser scanning technology for accident recording and investigation.

Use of scanners and point cloud software to collect data is speeding up traditional survey measurement and, on motorways particularly, this can save hours of disruption when traffic is held up, a major benefit to the economy. Laser scanning works in low light, night conditions and bad weather and collects far more data than a total station.

3D Laser Mapping has already supplied one of the UK's road death investigation units with equipment, in this case a Riegl VZ-400 which can produce high quality graphics and detailed plans of collision scenes for court use.

The company claims greater detail and colour compared to other laser scanners.

The VZ-400 has echo digitisation and online waveform analysis for a high performance with accuracies claimed of 5mm at ranges of up to 600m measuring up to 122,000 points/sec in a 100 by 360° field of view.

The evaluation of multiple targets combined with a reliable, robust and lightweight construction makes the VZ-400 also suited to civil engineering the firm says.



















For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Bitumen technology: from potholes to PMB plants
    November 21, 2014
    This month we look at how warm mix is helping to pave dirt roads, a new way to tackle potholes, and bring news of a new distribution centre for the UK - Kristina Smith reports The creation of a new mix design, incorporating MWV’s warm mix additive Evotherm, is providing cost-effective solutions for dirt roads in the US’s Charleston County. The first stretch to be paved with the new porous paving in April this year, Joseph White Road in the town of Adams Run, resulted in the estimated US$1.1 million construc
  • Public-private participation for highway law enforcement
    April 18, 2017
    In some countries, public-private partnerships for road traffic law enforcement are helping to greatly reduce traffic fatalities. But careful implementation is essential, according to a new white paper. Big brother is watching you. Speed cameras are just a cash cow for local authorities. Police use them to keep their speeding ticket statistics high. The list of suspicions goes on. But there is nothing suspicious about road deaths, says Philip Wijers, chairman of the sub-committee on enforcement at the US-ba
  • Innovative utilities approach
    March 20, 2012
    An innovative approach to the management of utilities works is the result of a partnership that has produced the Intelligent Trench. This novel underground mapping solution is also being combined with PelicanCorp's beforeUdig service to deliver a comprehensive and accurate national record-sharing service for underground assets in the UK. The new no-charge service allows local authorities and contractors to use the Intelligent Trench portal to access utility plan information directly from the portal's data b
  • Recycling asphalt provides green result
    September 30, 2013
    A survey carried out jointly by the National Asphalt Paving Association (NAPA) and the Federal Highway Association (FHWA) shows that asphalt recycling and energy-saving technologies are in increasing use in the US The increasing adoption of new construction practices in the asphalt pavement industry has saved more than US$2.2 billion during the 2011 paving season through the use of recycled materials and energy-saving warm-mix technologies. According to a survey conducted by the National Asphalt Pavem