Spanish firm launches LiDAR-Online network

Valencia, Spain: DIELMO (Digital Elevation Models) 3D, a Spanish company, launched the LiDAR-Online network, an online community for developing innovative services using LiDAR data. The cloud-based network provides a collaborative online service for hosting, sharing and discovering LiDAR data promoting public data access to the benefit of the LiDAR community and society as a whole.
LiDAR-Online provides organisations with a central location for managing their LiDAR, ortho imagery and geospatial data. It runs on Dielmo Server Technology providing web mapping services and hosts data in the LiDAR-Online Shop. LiDAR-Online allows users to view LiDAR point clouds in 3D online with no specialized software or knowledge, create profiles of the data allowing measurement, editing, classification and downloading as LAS, CAD and GIS formats.
Organisations that own LiDAR data are able to make their archived data publicly available as web-accessible services either for free or for sale, providing LiDAR data owners with a marketplace where they can sell their data for profit and recoup costs from their LiDAR investment.  In addition, organisations and individuals are able to publish their geoservices for any user to be able to use it online and see how efficient it can be.  This helps to promote the company’s products and projects fuelling demand for more projects to be contracted if users like the results from the geoservice online.
The website follows a social network model allowing users and providers to publish, obtain and manage online information. The purpose is to make LiDAR data accessible to the geospatial market and others who can benefit from it, eliminating traditional barriers such as lack of knowledge, software requirements or access to data by making LiDAR data understandable, easy to use and accessible online. This will open LiDAR data to new markets, increasing the demand for new projects, acquisitions and solutions related to LiDAR.
The LiDAR social network helps keep the LiDAR community connected and informed about the LiDAR market and its developments. Its intuitive interface and web applications enable fast and easy access to any dataset and geoservice available promoting the use of LiDAR data throughout the world. Anyone can become part of LiDAR-Online, free-of-charge, by simply registering as a user or provider.
LiDAR-Online helps organizations, companies and government agencies to keep in touch with the LiDAR community through the LiDAR Social Network, promote their products and services (software, hardware, mapping services, etc.) for free, and publish their LiDAR datasets on LiDAR-Online for free or for profit.
Users are able to stay in touch with the LiDAR community and use the LiDAR social network to promote their products, services and themselves for free. They are able to use and download LiDAR data online and receive LiDAR data in the most common GIS standard formats (las, laz, shp, dxf, kml, dgn, xyz, collada, etc.).
According to an article published in GIM International, online availability of LiDAR and other geospatial information has proven invaluable after natural disasters. On 11th May 2011, two earthquakes with their epicenters in Lorca caused significant damaged in the region of Murcia, Spain. A new aerial LiDAR survey was conducted in the region three days after the earthquake to obtain more accurate LiDAR data, with higher point densities, to supplement that which was already available from a PNOA project in 2009. The new and old LiDAR data was made available to anyone who needed it, allowing the damage to be assessed quickly and efficiently. In the case of a natural disaster such as this, releasing data obtained from flights before and after an event allowed any relevant users to create an inventory of the damage and detect any changes quickly and accurately using the appropriate tools. 
In order to make this information available to all potential users, Dielmo 3D created a LiDAR web service to manage Lorca’s earthquake data, based on Dielmo Server Technology. The technology enables visualization of the LiDAR point cloud before and after the disaster through WMS protocols, and provides free tools for visualizing the information in 3D or setting up profiles that users can classify the data in different categories and take measurements (height, distance, slope, etc.). The capabilities of this technology contributed to Dielmo Server Technology being chosen by Spain’s IGN to publish LiDAR data for the entire country on the internet.
DIELMO 3D has created four ways for LiDAR data owners to publish data and services online and potentially generate revenue on LiDAR-Online:- LiDAR data publication free for the owner allows those owners of LiDAR data who want to share it on the internet but don’t want to assume the cost of its publication. DIELMO 3D assumes the cost of the service of data preparation, hosting and transfer.
– Low Cost Publication offers an initial low cost publication service for LiDAR data (about 1 euro per GB) inside the LiDAR Online shop and allows owners to generate revenue from the sale of their data through the LiDAR Online shop.
– Publication by Hosting – For organizations that want to host LiDAR data on their own servers, Dielmo 3D offers hosting and processing services for publishing LiDAR data online for internet, intranet, private servers and clouds.  
– Publication by Licences offers organizations with large amounts of LiDAR data and potentially many customers for this data the opportunity to purchase licenses to prepare and publish unlimited amounts of LiDAR data online and charge their customers for conversion of data, hosting data and generating profits from the sale of the data. 
Source: DIELMO