A five day lidar stakeholder forum was held at the University of Lethbridge during the week of July 8th 2013. Participants attended from across Alberta and Canada with guests from the USA and Germany to present and discuss industry and public sector needs and opportunities. Discussion centred on critical issues like data access, management and licensing; operational configurations and the propagation of uncertainty into in derivative data products; and the development of best practices guidelines and standards across a range of public sector geosciences application areas. Due to the recent flooding in Alberta, the use of lidar for flood hazard assessment was raised throughout.

Following two days of talks, participants attended a field trip to observe the ILRIS Long Range scanner in action to map changes over the face of Turtle Mountain in the Crowsnest Pass. The last two days were dedicated to lab-based hands on training of the lidar post processing tools: Terrascan and LASAtools. Martin Isenburg of rapidlassoo, Germany, kindly gave his time to assist with this event. The Government of Alberta and Airborne Imaging Inc are gratefully acknowledged for assisting with the costs to host this forum at the University of Lethbridge. A report of the discussion points and results of breakout discussions will be available online later in the summer.