Airborne Bathymetric Lidar ? supporting shallow water exploration and development

Abstract

Over the last five years the use of airborne lidar technology as a bathymetric survey tool has increased substantially. The systems are well suited to surveying in clear, coastal water and surveys have been performed for a variety of reasons, including: updating nautical charts, supporting coastal and reef management, and oil and gas exploration and development. Seamlessly and safely surveying shallow, complex and drying areas is possible with an airborne platform and because the swath width of the systems are independent of water depth shallow areas are surveyed with no loss of efficiency. Because airborne lidar systems are able to efficiently operate in areas where acoustic, vessel mounted, systems suffer significant inefficiencies a new segment of the bathymetric survey market has been defined; contract surveys for airborne lidar systems. In Australia the two users of airborne bathymetric lidar technology have been the Royal Australian Navy and the offshore Oil and Gas Exploration community. Since 1998 several companies involved in offshore exploration including the explorers themselves as well as seismic exploration companies have commissioned airborne bathymetric lidar surveys. Bathymetric surveys have been completed for a variety of purposes; supporting seismic acquisition in poorly charted and dangerous waters, allowing efficient route planning for pipeline construction in complex and environmentally sensitive areas and provided bathymetric and topographic data to allow evaluation of alternative pipeline landfall locations. In each case the ability of airborne lidar systems to efficiently and safely survey large and remote areas when acoustic systems either could not operate or could not meet tight schedules was important to the end user of the data.