Public LIDAR sources

Everything we can stream today, without an API key.

These are the public datasets powering the v0 prototype. The USGS 3DEP coverage spans Brian's full licensure footprint (AL, GA, TN, MS, FL) — 247 projects, 30B+ public-domain points. The Hobu COPC samples are browser-streamable today. The academic benchmarks anchor our model training plan.

v0 demo path

Phase 1 (today): three Hobu COPC files stream directly via HTTPS range reads. Phase 2: transcode one Alabama EPT to COPC via untwine, host on R2 with CORS, native CesiumJS streaming.

Browser-streamable COPC (Hobu demos)

NameSizeClassifiedNotesStream
Autzen Stadium ~80 MB RGB + ASPRS classified. The canonical COPC demo. View ↗
Millsite, UT medium Open terrain. Good for fly-through demos. View ↗
SoFi Stadium ~2.3 GB Very large. Proves streaming works at GB scale. View ↗

USGS 3DEP — Southeast US (247 projects)

Public domain. Hosted on AWS Open Data (s3://usgs-lidar-public, us-west-2). EPT format — native to Potree 2.0, transcodes to COPC via untwine.

ProjectStateNotesEPT manifest
USGS_LPC_AL_JeffersonCo_2013_LAS_2015 AL Jefferson County (Birmingham metro). Direct hit for Weygand HQ. ept.json ↗
AL_NorthAL_2019 AL Madison / Limestone / Jackson / Morgan / Marshall. High-density 2019. ept.json ↗
AL_17Co_1_2020 AL 17-county central Alabama, 2020. Broadest recent coverage. ept.json ↗
AL_SWCentral_1_B22 AL Southwest Central Alabama, 2022. Newest available. ept.json ↗
USGS_LPC_AL_MobileCo_2014_LAS_2016 AL Mobile County. Coastal AL. ept.json ↗
USGS_LPC_TN_ShelbyCo_2017_LAS_2019 TN Memphis metro. ept.json ↗
USGS_LPC_GA_Georgia_A1_2016_LAS_2018 GA Georgia statewide block A1. ept.json ↗
USGS_LPC_MS_Madison_Yazoo_2012_LAS_2016 MS Madison / Yazoo, MS. ept.json ↗
USGS_LPC_FL_Panhandle_B1_2018_LAS_2019 FL Florida panhandle (Pensacola area). ept.json ↗

Full list: 247 projects rendered on the /viewer map. Boundary index: github.com/hobuinc/usgs-lidar.

Academic benchmarks (training data)

These are the canonical benchmarks for ground-classification ML. We pretrain on these (esp. DALES + OpenGF + Hessigheim) before fine-tuning on Weygand-labeled tracts.

DatasetSizeLicenseNotesLink
DALES ~500M pts Academic (request) Largest public ALS benchmark, 8 semantic classes. Dayton, OH.
Hessigheim 3D (H3D) ~10 GB Research (registration) UAV LiDAR ~800 pts/m² + textured mesh. Closest match for our use case.
OpenGF ~500M pts / 47 km² Academic Ground filtering benchmark. Direct relevance.
Toronto3D 78M pts Academic Mobile mapping LIDAR, 8 classes.
SensatUrban 2.85B pts Academic UK urban UAV. Recent benchmark.

OpenTopography

OpenTopography hosts raw LAZ tiles per dataset with shapefile tile indexes. The intended workflow: query Catalog API → download tile index → PDAL merges selected tiles into a COPC you self-host. Not a one-URL drop-in but the highest-quality source for academic / research demos.