6. Environmental aspects

From an application point of view, LiDAR technology can be used in projects of high environmental interest. The study of urban heat islands, the estimation of biomass in a forest, and coastal monitoring are concrete examples.

From a utilization point of view, LiDAR technology has varying degrees of impact on the environment and greenhouse gas emissions. When choosing LiDAR for a given project, at least three aspects need to be taken into account:

• manufacture and use of hardware used for acquisition: vehicle, GNSS, scanner, etc. ;

• choice of vehicle for MLS and ULS: backpack, drone, car, helicopter, plane... ;

• data storage: data format and size, local hard drive storage, cloud storage (eco-friendly cloud provider)... ;

• ...