No ordinary view

Phil and I (and my put-upon son, on his birthday no less) spent a day last week scanning part of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, to characterise the 3D structure of the vegetation in the park. The park is a legacy of the 2012 Olympics, and provides the first new parkland in London in over a century. Extensive landscaping has resulted in ".... over 35km of pathways and cycleways, 6.5km of waterways, over 100 hectares (ha) of land capable of designation as Metropolitan Open Land, 45ha of Biodiversity Action Plan Habitat, 4000 trees, playgrounds and a Park suitable for year-round events and sporting activities." (Legacy Communities SchemeBiodiversity Action Plan 2014-2019, LCS-GLB-S106-APP-BAP-001-V01, 2013). UCL has ambitious plans for expansion into UCL East. As part of this, our colleague Prof. Kate Jones and her team have been doing some amazing work using in situ sensors to map bat populations in the area, in real time. See more details of the project here.

By measuring the 3D structure of the park, we're hoping to be able to provide Kate and her team with information they can use to help understand the paths and activities of the bats in the park. And while we're at it we hope to be able to map and monitor changes in the trees and shrub cover of the park over time. Phil has produced some stunning fly-throughs of the data we collected. Given that we only scanned along about 200m of path in the centre of these animations, the far detail still amazes me! The views of the Arcelormittal Orbit, the London Stadium, and the front of the late Zaha Hadid's amazing Aquatics Centre, are pretty spectacular.

Fly through of Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park from Phil Wilkes on Vimeo.

Fly along the Lea River at Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park from Phil Wilkes on Vimeo.


Lastly, our work at Wytham Woods also features briefly in a series of short films showing the range of measurements going on using new technology in the so-called Laboratory with Leaves.

Life and death on your lawn

The new BBC4 documentary on Britain's Gardens that we featured in aired last night (available on iPLayer until August 2017). And slightly melodramatic title aside, it was excellent (despite me being in it) - really well-put together, thoughtful, and with some beautiful footage. Beyond the usual British garden staples - hedgehogs,  foxes, blue tits - there were some fascinating bits on snails, spiders and pond-dwellers.

The 3D fly-through that Phil produced from our lidar data looked really good on screen. Various HD versions of them are on vimeo:

LiDAR scan of back garden featured in BBC 4’s “Life and Death on the Lawn” from Phil Wilkes on Vimeo.


LiDAR scan of back garden featured in BBC 4’s “Life and Death on the Lawn” from Phil Wilkes on Vimeo.


LiDAR scan of back garden featured in BBC 4's "Life and Death on the Lawn" from Phil Wilkes on Vimeo.

And the resulting garden model, with RGB from the lidar camera, is on sketchfab:

Welwyn Garden City back garden by kungphil on Sketchfab

Not bad for a day out in Welwyn!