NRW Open LiDAR: Merging Points into Proper LAS Files

In the first part of this series we downloaded, compressed, and viewed some of the newly released open LiDAR data for the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. In the second part we look at how to merge the multiple point clouds provided back into single LAS or LAZ files that are as proper as possible. Follow along with a recent version of LAStools and a pair of DGM and DOM files for your area of interest. For downloading the LiDAR we suggest using the wget command line tool with option ‚-c‘ that after interruption in transmission will restart where it left off.

• download raw LiDAR points describing the DTM (DGM)
• download raw LiDAR points describing the DSM (DOM)

In the first part of this series we downloaded the pair of DGM and DOM files for the City of Bonn. The DGM file and the DOM file are zipped archives that contain the points in 1km by 1km tiles stored as x, y, z coordinates with centimeter resolution. We had already converted these textual *.xyz files into binary *.laz files. We did this with the open source LASzip compressor that is distributed with LAStools as described in that blog post. We continue now with the assumption that you have converted all of the *.xyz files to *.laz files as described here.

There are multiple tiles for each square kilometer as the LiDAR has been split into different files based on classification and return type. Furthermore there are also synthetic points that were created by the land survey department to replace LiDAR under bridges and along buildings for generating higher quality rasters. We want to combine all points of a square kilometer into a single LAZ tile as it is usually expected. Simply merging the multiple files per tile is not an option as this would result in loosing point classifications and return type information as well as in duplicating all single returns that are stored in more than one file. The folks at OpenNRW offer this helpful graphic to know what the acronyms above mean:

In the following we’ll be looking at the set of files corresponding to the UTM tile 32366 / 5622. We wanted an interesting area with large buildings, a bridge, and water. We were looking for a suitable area using the KML overlays generated in part one. The tile along the Rhine river selected in the picture below covers the old city hall, the opera house, and the „Kennedy Bridge“ has a complete set of DGM and DOM files:

      3,501 dgm1l-ab_32366_5622_1_nw.laz
     16,061 dgm1l-ag_32366_5622_1_nw.laz
      3,269 dgm1l-aw_32366_5622_1_nw.laz
    497,008 dgm1l-brk_32366_5622_1_nw.laz
  7,667,715 dgm1l-lpb_32366_5622_1_nw.laz
 12,096,856 dgm1l-lpnb_32366_5622_1_nw.laz
     15,856 dgm1l-lpub_32366_5622_1_nw.laz

      3,269 dom1l-aw_32366_5622_1_nw.laz
 21,381,106 dom1l-fp_32366_5622_1_nw.laz

We now assign classification codes and flags to the returns from the different files using las2las, merge them together with lasmerge, and recover single, first, and last return information with lasduplicate. We set classifications to bridge deck (17), ground (2), to unclassified (1), and to noise (7) for all returns in the files with the acronym ‚brk‘ (= bridge points), the acronym ‚lpb‘ (= last return ground), the acronym ‚lpnb‘ (= last return non-ground), and the acronym ‚lpub‘ (= last return under ground). with las2las and store the resulting files to a temporary folder.

las2las -i dgm1l-brk_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
        -set_classification 17 ^
        -odir temp -olaz

las2las -i dgm1l-lpb_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
        -set_classification 2 ^
        -odir temp -olaz

las2las -i dgm1l-lpnb_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
        -set_classification 1 ^
        -odir temp -olaz

las2las -i dgm1l-lpub_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
        -set_classification 7 ^
        -odir temp -olaz

Next we use the synthetic flag of the LAS format specification to flag any additional points that were added (no measured) by the survey department to generate better raster products. We set classifications to ground (2) and the synthetic flag for all points of the files with the acronym ‚ab‘ (= additional ground) and the acronym ‚ag‘ (= additional building footprint). We set classifications to water (9) and the synthetic flag for all points of the files with the acronym ‚aw‘ (= additional water bodies). Files with acronym ‚aw‘ appear both in the DGM and DOM archive. Obviously we need to keep only one copy.

las2las -i dgm1l-ab_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
        -set_classification 2 ^
        -set_synthetic_flag 1 ^
        -odir temp -olaz

las2las -i dgm1l-ag_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
        -set_classification 2 ^
        -set_synthetic_flag 1 ^
        -odir temp -olaz

las2las -i dgm1l-aw_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
        -set_classification 9 ^
        -set_synthetic_flag 1 ^
        -odir temp -olaz

Using lasmerge we merge all returns from files with acronyms ‚brk‘ (= bridge points), ‚lpb‘ (= last return ground),  ‚lpnb‘ (= last return non-ground), and ‚lpub‘ (= last return under ground) into a single file that will then contain all of the (classified) last returns for this tile.

lasmerge -i temp\dgm1l-brk_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
         -i temp\dgm1l-lpb_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
         -i temp\dgm1l-lpnb_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
         -i temp\dgm1l-lpub_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
         -o temp\dgm1l-lp_32366_5622_1_nw.laz

Next we run lasduplicate three times to recover which points are single returns and which points are the first and the last return of a pair of points generated by the same laser shot. First we run lasduplicate with option ‚-unique_xyz‘ to remove any xyz duplicates from the last return file. We also mark all surviving returns as the second of two returns. Similarly, we remove any xyz duplicates from the first return file and mark all survivors as the first of two returns. Finally we run lasduplicate with option ‚-single_returns‘ with the unique last and the unique first return files as ‚-merged‘ input. If a return with the exact same xyz coordinates appears in both files only the first copy is kept and marked as a single return. In order to keep the flags and classifications from the last return file, the order in which the last and first return files are listed in the command line is important.

lasduplicate -i temp\dgm1l-lp_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
             -set_return_number 2 -set_number_of_returns 2 ^
             -unique_xyz ^
             -o temp\last_32366_5622_1_nw.laz

lasduplicate -i dom1l-fp_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
             -set_return_number 1 -set_number_of_returns 2 ^
             -unique_xyz ^
             -o temp\first_32366_5622_1_nw.laz

lasduplicate -i temp\last_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
             -i temp\first_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
             -merged ^
             -single_returns ^
             -o temp\all_32366_5622_1_nw.laz

We then add the synthetic points with another call to lasmerge to obtain a LAZ file containing all points of the tile correctly classified, flagged, and return-numbered.

lasmerge -i temp\dgm1l-ab_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
         -i temp\dgm1l-ag_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
         -i temp\dgm1l-aw_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
         -i temp\all_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
         -o temp\merged_32366_5622_1_nw.laz

Optional: For more efficient use of this file in subsequent processing – and especially to accelerate area-of-interest queries with lasindex – it is often of great advantage to reorder the points in a spatially coherent manner. A simple call to lassort will rearrange the points along a space-filling curve such as a Hilbert curve or a Z-order curve.

lassort -i temp\merged_32366_5622_1_nw.laz ^
        -o bonn_32366_5622_1_nw.laz

Note that we also renamed the file because a good name can be useful if you find that file again in two years from now. Let’s have a look at the result with lasview.

lasview -i bonn_32366_5622_1_nw.laz

In lasview you can press <c> repeatedly to switch through all available coloring modes until you see the yellow (single) / red (first) / last (blue) coloring of the returns. The recovered return types are especially evident under vegetation, in the presence of wires, and along building edges. Press <x> to select an area of interest and press <x> again to inspect it more closely. Press <i> while hovering above a point to show its coordinates, classification, and return type.

We did each processing in separate steps to illustrate the overall workflow. The above sequence of LAStools command line calls can be shortened by combining multiple processing steps into one operation. This is left as an exercise for the advanced LAStools user … (-;

Acknowledgement: The LiDAR data of OpenNRW comes with a very permissible license. It is called „Datenlizenz Deutschland – Namensnennung – Version 2.0“ or „dl-de/by-2-0“ and allows data and derivative sharing as well as commercial use. It only requires us to name the source. We need to cite the „Land NRW (2017)“ with the year of the download in brackets and specify the Universal Resource Identification (URI) for both the DOM and the DGM. Done. So easy. Thank you, OpenNRW … (-: