Mapping New Terrain

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Airborne 1 Corp.


Core Business:

Laser terrain mapping


Employees in 2006:

25


Employees in 2007:

37


Goal:

To become the dominant provider of laser terrain mapping technology in the U.S.


Driving Force:

Need of public sector agencies, developers and engineers for precise ground

terrain maps

Laser terrain mapping is the hottest thing to hit the land surveying business in decades, and El Segundo-based Airborne 1 Corp. is hoping to ride this trend to the bank.


Airborne 1 is the only California firm specializing exclusively in Light Detection and Ranging or LiDAR mapping, a technology that combines laser and geographic positioning system technologies to produce high-resolution topographic maps and has become more advanced over the past decade.


These maps can be used by real estate developers, road engineers, government agencies, utility companies and others interested in obtaining precise information on drainage patterns, earth removal, power grids and flood control mechanisms. They provide a much more detailed view than conventional aerial maps and can also penetrate vegetation to depict the ground underneath, thus eliminating much of the need for ground-based land surveying.


“LiDAR mapping is the quickest way to get detailed maps of the underlying terrain,” said Todd Stennett, Airborne 1’s chief executive.


For years, Stennett has been laboring to get Airborne 1’s technology accepted in the marketplace with limited success until recently. And now that LiDAR technology is hot, the question for Airborne 1 is whether it will live up to the hype over the long term and allow the company to grow far beyond its 2006 annual revenue of $6.2 million, which was up from $4.3 in 2005


Stennett stumbled onto LiDAR technology in the late 1990s while on a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration internship that was sponsored by the University of Southern California ‘s Marshall School of Business, where he was a student.


“My assignment was to find NOAA technologies that were ripe for commercialization and come up with a business plan on how to bring one of those technologies to market,” he said. Always fascinated by maps, Stennett was drawn to LiDAR, which had been honed by NOAA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.


Using lasers to map precise distances is not new, of course. In one of their more famous experiments, Apollo astronauts placed mirror arrays on the moon so that laser beams could be bounced off them to determine the moon’s exact distance from Earth. Those experiments revealed that the moon is pulling away from the Earth at a little over one inch per year.


Over the last 20 years, these government agencies have combined this laser technology with global positioning system technology to triangulate the exact geographic coordinates of a specific point on the Earth within an inch. By adding other technology to adjust for aircraft movement, a laser terrain mapping system can then be used to map large swaths of land from airplanes.


“The best use of LiDAR data is as a foundation for mapping. said Jeff Hemphill, geographic information systems analyst with the Valencia office of William Lettis and Associates, an Airborne 1 client. “It’s accurate to within a foot; much more so than the 10-meter contour data from the state and the 30-meter contour data from the United States Geological Survey.”


But these aerial-mounted laser mapping systems are expensive more than $1 million each, which meant that in order to launch a commercial venture, Stennett had to land significant upfront investments. In 2000, the fledgling company received an initial investment of $800,000 from Tech Coast Angels and Palo Alto-based Garage.com. That was followed by $1.1 million from El Camino Capital, a Beverly Hills-based buyout firm.



Initial success

Airborne 1 did achieve some initial success in finding clients among government agencies and engineering firms, enough to place it on the Inc. 500 fastest-growing companies list for 2003. But after that, growth stalled out amid industry resistance to the new technology. Land mappers and surveyors a traditionally conservative bunch were wary of the new technology, preferring tried and true methods.


“It’s only in the last three or four years that the industry has begun to consider LiDAR as a viable alternative to conventional aerial mapping,” said Devin Kelley, a digital mapper with the Oakland-based Pacific Aerial Surveys unit of HJW GeoSpaital Inc. Kelley has been using Airborne 1’s LiDAR data on major mapping projects for governmental agencies.


The real turning point came when one of the major governing bodies of the mapping industry the Aerial Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing certified the LiDAR technology in early 2005. Almost overnight, the industry landscape changed. Suddenly, orders for laser terrain mapping began pouring in to Airborne 1 and the dozen or so other firms across North America that specialized in the technology.


Developers want laser terrain mapping to track how much earth they need to have moved for their projects; government agencies use it to track land use and drainage patterns; and utilities want LiDAR to monitor sagging power lines and vegetation encroachment.


In recent weeks, for example, the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power hired Airborne 1 to track ground movement around some of its reservoirs, and the California Department of Water Resources hired the firm to aid in its levee reconstruction efforts in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta area.


Now, the biggest issue for Airborne 1 is finding more capital to handle all the new orders coming in. But getting that additional capital hinges on the long-term outlook for LiDAR technology. And on that crucial issue, opinions diverge.


Some, like Stennett, believe LiDAR mapping will eventually supplant most of the traditional mapping tools, creating a multibillion-dollar industry. They cite its accuracy and that it’s far cheaper than hiring a team of surveyors to do the detailed mapping work.


Stennett also sees industry turning to a comprehensive database of LiDAR maps that’s just now getting started.


But others believe the market for LiDAR is much more limited. Take this view from a paper published in Earth Observation Magazine by Robert Fowler, then vice president of sales and marketing for Ottawa, Canada-based Lasermap Inc.:


“While some people will tell you LiDAR will do anything and everything for you, I prefer to ignore the hype and ask people to look upon LiDAR as another tool or sensor which will help solve a specific problem.”

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Howard Fine
Howard Fine is a 23-year veteran of the Los Angeles Business Journal. He covers stories pertaining to healthcare, biomedicine, energy, engineering, construction, and infrastructure. He has won several awards, including Best Body of Work for a single reporter from the Alliance of Area Business Publishers and Distinguished Journalist of the Year from the Society of Professional Journalists.

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