In the Airborne lidar Bathymetry (ALB) world, service providers are often called upon to provide topographic data along the land-water interface, often corresponding to topographic specifications for accuracy and resolution or point density. This has been simple for us to do, as the relatively compact topo-lidar sensors are an easy addition to our traditionally much larger, heavier and more power-hungry bathymetric lidar. But in the topo world, collecting data beyond the waterline without heavily amending the normal operational scenario and choice of aircraft has been very difficult. Modern ÿtopobathy? sensors have sought to address these needs, but there is forever a compromise, as the bathy element of such systems has considerable water penetration limitations compared to ÿfull depth? bathymetric lidars. Fugro's RAMMS was introduced to the industry a little over two years ago. The unique design and mode of operation has revolutionized how a modern ALB system can augment topo-lidar primary sensors, with which it shares similar physical characteristics in terms of size, weight and power requirements. RAMMS allows the topo-lidar provider to easily augment their data collection across the land-water interface without compromise in the depth penetration characteristics more typical of much larger, contemporary ALB systems. Further, RAMMS high density bathymetry has now also allowed typical topo-lidar processing software and workflows to ingest deep-water bathymetric data and generate comparable accuracy, repeatability and uncertainty data. Fugro has now conducted numerous surveys with RAMMS which illustrate how the integration of ALB and topo-lidar systems, purposely designed for their specific environmental data capture, can be combined to create seamless, uncompromised datasets. This presentation will briefly review the systems involved and include real-world examples of these data acquisitions over large survey areas of varying terrain and bathymetry.
