HPC Solutions for ALS Point Cloud Processing in Pathfinding and Powerline Detection and Characterization

In this thesis, the creation of solutions for emergency management is addressed, specially in rural areas, using data taken from sensors boarded in aerial vehicles. The provided solutions will be both preventive (security inspections, fire risk detection) and reactive (best escape routes determination, safe areas in case of fire). Thus, algorithm to search optimal paths and to detect and characterize powerlines were developed. It is objective of this thesis to provide solutions in order to minimize both the utilization of hardware resources and the time needed to reach such solutions.

keywords: LiDAR, Airborne LiDAR, Point Clouds, High Performance Computing, Classification, Non-linear modelling