USACE National Coastal Mapping Program and the next generation of data products

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has been monitoring coastal change for decades. Each coastal district has the duty to maintain the federal navigation channels to insure safe passage for commercial and private vessels. In addition to these navigation channels, monitoring coastal change and regional sediment management rank high in both importance and financial expenditures. Acoustic boat surveys have been and will continue to be a viable way to accomplish these goals. For the past 15 years these surveys efforts have been assisted by the Joint Airborne Lidar Bathymetry Technical Center of expertise (JALBTCX). The JALBTCX has in-house survey capability using the U.S. Naval Oceanographic Office´s Compact Hydrographie Airborne Rapid Total Survey (CHARTS) system. The CHARTS system collects bathyme?trie lidar, topographic lidar, RGB imagery, and hyperspectral imagery. CHARTS is mounted on a Beech King Air 200 which provides a platform capable of surveying the federal navigation projects and the areas between to support regional sediment management. In 2004, USACE Headquarters funded JALBTCX to map the sandy shoreline of the continental U.S. on a recurring basis. This mapping effort falls under the National Coastal Mapping Program (NCMP). In addition to the NCMP, JALBTCX performs emergency response surveys following natural disasters. Since 2004, JALBTCX was surveyed after every category 2 (or greater) hurricane that makes land fall within the U.S. As the survey capabilities increase it becomes more difficult for the local engineers to process the large volumes of data and the demand for analysis ready products became a necessity. JALBTCX took on this challenge and is currently delivering a suite of products to meet the needs. With the addition of new sensors, JALBTCX has also been able to develop new data fusion products to assist in monitoring the engineering, economic, and environmental changes to the coastal zone.