3D Elevation data crucial to supporting the Nation’s infrastructure and maintaining economic security
Decisionmakers rely on elevation data in support of the safety of people, property and the environment.
While most Americans probably aren’t familiar with the 3D Elevation Program, or 3DEP, their lives have been unknowingly touched by the power of its data.
3DEP is managed by the U.S. Geological Survey, in collaboration with numerous Federal, state, local, Tribal and other partners. The first full year of 3DEP production was 2016, initiated in response to growing needs for high-quality topographic data and a wide range of 3D representations of natural and constructed features across the United States.
Decisionmakers across the U.S. use this elevation data to inform critical decisions every day ranging from the immediate safety of people, property, and the environment. Conservative estimates put the benefits to American people at $690 million per year, with the potential for much more benefits as additional data collection are completed.
What makes 3DEP so valuable is that it’s systematically collected, three-dimensional and high quality. The underlying technology used to collect the data is light detection and ranging, known as lidar.
Lidar data are being collected for the conterminous United States, Hawaii, and the U.S. territories, and interferometric synthetic aperture radar (IfSAR) data were required for Alaska, because its cloud cover and remote terrain limit the ability to use lidar.
At the end of fiscal year 2023, 94.7% of the United States has elevation data that meet 3DEP specifications for high accuracy and resolution available or in progress.
The goal is 100% coverage of the U.S. Upon completion this dataset would provide the first-ever national baseline of consistent, high-resolution topographic elevation data, both bare earth and 3D point clouds. The national 3DEP baseline will become increasingly more useful and valuable as it is compared with new 3DEP data collections to monitor where human and natural landscapes have changed.
Lidar data is captured with the use of sensors attached to airplanes or helicopters to determine elevation based on how quickly light emitted from the aircraft takes to reach the Earth’s surface and return to the sensor.
The following are examples of how 3DEP data supports the nation’s infrastructure and economic resilience in the areas of flood-risk management, precision agriculture, infrastructure projects and landslide hazards management.
3DEP and Flood Risk Management
Over the last 30 years, on average, flooding has cost the United States nearly $8 billion annually and has resulted in more than 80 fatalities per year, according to the NOAA, National Weather Service Hydrologic Information Center.
Improved flood risk assessment and management rely on high quality elevation data along coasts and waterways to help reduce property damage and save lives. The data collected through 3DEP is used to provide the most accurate hydrologic forecasting models and flood-risk maps that result in better preparation for possible flooding or other disasters for both responders and planners.
The data provided supports the management of critical infrastructure, detecting land-surface changes from natural processes, such as landslides and erosion, and from human activities like urban growth and agriculture.
The dataset also helps improve state and local government risk management and flood response, emergency management, and management of floodplains, stormwater drainage facilities and dams management. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is a partner and top user of this data in support of their mission to help people before, during and after disasters.
3DEP and Precision Agriculture
The agriculture industry, including farmers who rely on advanced technologies, increasingly use lidar data for crop management to enhance productivity.
High-quality terrain information from lidar provides producers with more details about their soil type, soil wetness, drainage, and topographic variations within farm fields (slope, aspect, and curvature).
Knowledge of these elevation characteristics gives farms the opportunity to use site-specific methods such as the use of prescription applications for seed, fertilizer, water, or herbicides. It can also help with, farmland suitability analysis, farm pond design, drainage analysis and conservation planning.
Using the data can improve cropland management and farming practices as demonstrated by increased crop yields and decrease losses due to flooding or poor site design and conserve critical natural resources and habitats.
3DEP and Landslide Hazard Management
The USGS Landslide Hazards Program relies on the availability of high-resolution, 3D elevation data to conduct landslide hazard assessments, pursue landslide investigations and forecasts, and provide technical assistance to respond to landslide emergencies.
Detailed and accurate information helps researchers better understand the landscape and its susceptibility to landslides. The high-resolution terrain data significantly aids in the assessments on landslides needed to forecast of when and where landslides are likely to occur as well as provide insight as on potential size, speed, and effects in certain environments.
The USGS Landslides Hazards Program uses detailed elevation data to improve delivery of natural hazard information communications to decisionmakers and the public. This reduces damage property and infrastructure loss from landslides and is helpful in planning for evacuations and staging areas.
Elevation data provides input for slope-stability models, which USGS uses to identify locations where shallow landslides may mobilize into fast-moving, potentially damaging, and deadly debris flows; landslide initiation and mobility models landslide inventory and deposits maps to show activity of landslides.
3DEP and Infrastructure projects
Nationwide, accurate topographic surveys and lidar point clouds have become essential in supporting electric power grids, earth moving construction projects, topographic land surveying, and complex hydrologic models.
Elevation data is also used for infrastructure maintenance and can provide valuable productivity, safety, and cost-saving benefits to improvement projects and associated construction management.
Examples of using 3D elevation data for infrastructure projects include utility surveys and corridor mapping, terrain and other obstruction identification for aviation, dam, levee, and coastal-structure failure modeling and mitigation, construction planning, evaluations of geologic, coastal, and other features and preliminary engineering.
The benefits of using the data can be seen in improved personnel safety from reduced exposure to hazards in the field, increased detail from the high density of point measurements captured and coverage of visible surfaces for large and inaccessible project areas.
Leveraging Partnerships for Future Success
Developing 3DEP is truly a community effort, including data acquisition partnerships that leverage funding, contracts with experienced private mapping firms, technical expertise, lidar data standards, and specifications, and most important, public access to high quality 3D elevation data.
The USGS will continue to build a modern elevation foundation for stronger, more resilient communities that strengthen and expand the U.S. economy, improve decision-making, and ensure effective and efficient communication and infrastructures across the Nation.
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