[OSGeo-Standards] Q 1 + Q2 2016 REPORT: my OGC membership slot

[Martin Isenburg]

Hello,

I have used my OGC membership slot to (remote-) attend the fourth meeting
of the Point Cloud Domain Working Group that took place (today) during the
June 2016 OGC TC meeting in Dublin, Ireland. I gave a presentation during
which I first briefly repeated our concern about LiDAR format fragmentation
but mainly gave a presentation on the open LAS format, on the open source
LiDAR compressor LASzip, on the changes in the LAS 1.4 format, and the new
features planned for the "native extension" of LASzip to the new LAS 1.4
point types. My pre-recorded 16 minute presentation is available here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucY3WPQKP6o

One of the most interesting parts of this meeting was the result of the OGC
point cloud survey that had 13 questions ranging from storage, transfer,
size, tools, etc. and got 188 responses from 175 different organizations. I
have attached images of the results to the question "What formats do you
use to store point clouds?".

Only four of the seven "zLAS" answers are independent users but as more
content in this closed format goes online we can expect their number to
grow. The other three "votes" come from employees or triple gold business
partners of the company that created "zLAS".

http://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1_6389UlkIblWyneY5WbbONMMJ-ZiNaeUmcs_iG6olS0/edit#gid=663760835

Personal observation: If you scrutinize the details of this survey
"agendas" become noticable. You may remember that I was a bit at odds with
Lewis Graham - the chair of the ASPRS LAS Working Group - on his lack of
leadership in the controversy surrounding "Optimized LAS". Despite him
stating that he has managed/processed/stored/etc. more than 1 trillion
(10^12) points in the last 12 months he states that has used zLAS but
apparently not LAZ. Note that Lewis is also the aforementioned triple gold
business partner of the company that created "Optimized LAS" or "zLAS" ...

I plan to use my OGC slot to update and involve the Point Cloud Domain
Working Group as much as possible on the on-going development efforts of
LASzip for the LAS 1.4. I therefore request for my OGC slot to be extended
for another six months.

Regards,

Martin

PS: Due to travel in Asia I was not able to (remote-) attend the third
meeting of the Point Cloud Domain Working Group that took place during the
March 2016 OGC TC meeting in Washington, D.C, USA.
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