LiDAR Forest Inventory Viewer

Stream billions of LiDAR points in the browser with tree detection, canopy height and measurement tools.

Role: Point Cloud & 3D Developer
Client: Forestry management firm
Timeline: 4 months
Platform: Web application

Open the viewer

lidar.isonline.tech

Live

LiDAR point cloud viewer showing a forest colored by elevation

4.5Bpoints streamed
1.2Mtrees detected
95%detection accuracy

Overview

The brief

Foresters were shipping hard drives of LiDAR between offices. I built a web viewer that streams entire survey campaigns and automatically detects individual trees.

Challenge

What made it hard

Survey campaigns contained billions of points — far beyond what a browser can load at once.

Solution

How I built it

Pipelines in PDAL convert raw LAS into COPC with an octree, the viewer streams only the visible level of detail, and a Python service derives canopy height models and tree segmentation.

Key features

Streaming of billions of points with level-of-detail
Automatic individual tree detection
Canopy height and biomass estimates
Distance, height and volume measurements
Elevation, intensity and classification coloring

Tech stack

Potree
COPC
PDAL
Three.js
Python

See it running

Open the live app in your browser.

Open the viewer