This September, several clients and partners revealed new techniques and case studies for using Teledyne Optech airborne lidar in forestry and environmental mapping at the  SilviLaser 2015 conference in France, particularly with multispectral data. Prof. Benoît St-Onge of the Université du Québec à Montréal revealed new algorithms that he developed for identifying trees using data from the multispectral  Optech Titan. By combining the spatial data collected by the lidar channels with their relative intensity data, Prof. St-Onge has differentiated softwood-hardwood trees with 97% accuracy and even identified trees by genus with 85% accuracy. Meanwhile, Dr. Antoine Cottin of CarboMap explored the operational side of multispectral lidar. Finally, Prof. Enrico Paringit of the University of the Philippines discussed how the Optech Gemini and Optech Pegasus have assisted his country's resource management initiatives, including park surveys, wildfire monitoring, and making inventories of tree plantations.

To meet the rapidly rising demand for its mobile mapping services, Michael Baker International has purchased two additional Optech Lynx SG mobile survey systems. As a global leader in engineering and consulting services, Michael Baker bought its first Lynx in 2009 and a second in 2014 to give clients fast, reliable data for targets like highways, airport runways, railway lines and flood control structures. These original purchases proved very successful, as Lynx's 1.2 million measurements per second, integrated camera, and production-focused Optech LMS processing suite enabled Michael Baker to deliver survey-grade data from systems travelling at highway speeds. Having doubled the size of its fleet from two to four systems, Michael Baker is now using them to help clients manage and grow their infrastructure. Currently, the systems are on a truly wide-scale project to map 14,000 traffic signals in Pennsylvania as part of the state's ground-breaking Traffic Signal Asset Management System.

This October, Teledyne Optech says goodbye to David Collison, our Regional Sales Manager for Asia-Pacific, who worked through many of the region's recent technological and political changes. Starting his career in the late 1970s, David was part of the transition from optical mechanical to analytical photogrammetry, and participated in the paradigm shift that moved Asian mapping away from government-only systems to a mixture of government and private industry. Working abroad in Hong Kong, Germany and Singapore over 19 years, David was an early participant in China and provided technical support to their National and Provincial Bureaus of Surveying and Mapping in the mid-1980s. He also supported the introduction of softcopy photogrammetry throughout Asia and provided technical assistance to state/defense mapping agencies in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam and Korea. When lidar technology arrived, David immediately saw its usefulness for penetrating South-East Asia's dense tropical jungles and precisely measuring Australia's wide open spaces.  He supported the emergence of private sector mapping in Indonesia by providing lidar solutions to a range of companies in ASEAN's most open and competitive mapping market, and also supplied airborne lidar systems to the Philippines' DREAM project, the region's largest lidar mapping initiative. Teledyne Optech thanks David for his tireless effort in South-East Asia, and wishes him all the best in his retirement!