Amar Nayegandhi describes the capabilities of the CZMIL SuperNova sensor and its benefits in high-density topography and bathymetry mapping for riverine, coastal, and lacustrine environments.
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The CZMIL is an acronym for Coastal Zone Mapping and Imaging Lidar, and as the name suggests, it is ideally suited to map coastal, riverine, and lacustrine environments. It is unique in many different ways. It has the ability to map really high-resolution topography as well as bathymetry from a single overflight. And it is also able to map in relatively turbid waters. This has been a really hard thing to do using lidar in the past. The CZMIL sensor uses a very high laser power pulse, and as a result, it can actually map through fairly turbid waters and be able to get to 3.5 times the Secchi depth. So the CZMIL can do better than three and a half times of what your eye can see as the laser penetrates through the water. So that allows the CZMIL to get you high-resolution bathymetry in areas which are really hard to access with boats. And as a result, it's actually complementary to what we typically measure bathymetry with, which is acoustic or sonar sensors that are usually on boats. In shallow waters, it is very inefficient for sonar technology to be used on boats because you are mapping a really small area. With airborne platforms, such as using the CZMIL sensor, you can now, from an airplane at 400 to 800 meters altitude, be able to map a much wider area. The CZMIL sensor also has an RGB camera, a 150-megapixel camera, that produces imagery along with the lidar flights. There are several applications of topobathymetric lidar data, such as those produced by the CZMIL sensor. These include storm surge modeling in the coastal zone. It includes benthic habitat detection. It includes mapping riverine environments as well as bathymetry in lakes for flood inundation studies. Also, in the coastal zone for flood inundation studies, as well as flood risk management. Here at Dewberry we have done a lot of different projects related to using this this particular CZMIL platform. We are currently flying the Indian River Lagoon and mapping the bathymetry in that very important ecosystem. The technology used by the CZMIL sensor has been around for decades. The CZMIL sensor itself has been in use by the government agencies for over ten years. What has changed recently and what led us to go ahead and purchase the CZMIL sensor over the other sensors that are available in the market today, is that the SuperNova now has the density as well as the accuracies that are needed to meet the quality level one specifications that the USGS requires, as well as the quality level 0-B specifications that both USGS and NOAA require. We are excited with the opportunities that the CZMIL SuperNova presents to us, ranging from serving our clients, whether they are large clients, federal and state clients, that require large areas to be mapped, or some of our commercial clients that need small areas to be mapped for markets related to transportation, water, or any other engineering markets.