Lidar surveys take to Orkney’s skies

Those admiring Orkney's beautiful big blue skies over the last few days might have spotted a low flying plane carrying out important survey work for Orkney Islands Council.

The aircraft has been undertaking Lidar surveys of Orkney's coastline - providing the Council's Engineering team with vital data on potential coastal erosion and flooding issues.

The information will be used to ascertain where and when preventative works might be required in the future.

The Cessna 208B Grand Caravan EX completed several passes over the West Mainland, Hoy and the North Isles over the weekend, with the East Mainland likely to be completed today. 

Lidar, which stands for Light Detection and Ranging, is a remote sensing method that uses light in the form of a pulsed laser to measure distances.  These light pulses — combined with other data  — generate precise, three-dimensional information about the shape of the ground below and its surface characteristics.

A Lidar instrument principally consists of a laser, a scanner, and a specialized GPS receiver. Airplanes and helicopters are the most commonly used platforms for acquiring Lidar data over broad areas.

The work is being completed by Field Group A/S, a company who specialise in using geospatial technologies to provide their customers with data and insights, particularly for the infrastructure, construction, environment and public sectors.

This work has been made possible by the £160,000 General Capital Grant that the Council received from Scottish Government in March 2022 under the Coastal Change Adaptation Fund. The Coastal Change Adaptation Fund is a capital budget of £11.7 million for coastal change adaptation agreed between COSLA and the Scottish Government and announced in September 2020.

Lorna Richardson is the Council’s Head of Neighbourhood Services.  She said: “The data that will be gathered through these surveys will be vital to our Engineering team as we look to tackle some of the challenges that we are facing from coastal erosion and coastal flooding.  There will be lots of us that took the opportunity to visit some of Orkney’s beaches over the weekend and I’m sure some may have noticed changes taking place, even if they are small.

“The best way for us to get a true picture of what’s happening is to look at the bigger picture from above and this incredible technology allows us to do that.  We’ve been lucky enough to get a sustained weather window over the last few days to allow the team to complete the surveys, with the unusual flight patterns sure to have attracted attention.”