Since I can’t go to the field right now, I am stuck with analyzing the amazing LiDAR data from Slovenia. We have 1 m resolution data covering the entire country and oh my god it’s great for active tectonics research. But how do you actually make a DEM from the data? Here’s a quick guide using free software only.
Download the data
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First, visit the ARSO website that hosts the data: http://gis.arso.gov.si/evode/profile.aspx?id=atlas_voda_Lidar@Arso&culture=en-US. Now zoom into your area of interest (I decided to go for a stretch of the Žužemberk Fault, see arrow) and activate the D48GK grid.
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If you now click on one of the tiles you see several download options. Let’s download the DTM which comes in ASC format. I downloaded a rectangle of 5×4 tiles for our purpose, each 24.8 MB.
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Make the DEM
Unfortunately, you can’t simply throw the tiles into QGIS, so let’s use a great piece of free software instead – CloudCompare. This is such a powerful tool when it comes to working with point clouds, you should check out all its capabilities at some point. Here’s the download website: https://www.danielgm.net/cc/. Install and run it. Now drag & drop the 20 tiles into CloudCompare:
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Click “Apply all” and then “Yes to all” and you should quickly see your tiles. Select all tiles in the DB tree and click “merge multiple clouds”:
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Click “no” when asked if you want to create a scalar field with the original cloud index. Now you actually have a point cloud that you can tilt, zoom into, colour by elevation etc. However, we want just a DEM. When the merging is done, click “convert a cloud to 2D raster”:
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Choose “Z” as the projection plane because we want a DEM and not a side view, then click “update grid” and “yes” in the dialogue.
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Now the DEM is ready. You can export it by simply clicking on “raster”:
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Check the results
That’s it, your raster file is saved in the same folder as the original tiles. Let’s check if it worked. Open QGIS (https://qgis.org/en/site/) and drag & drop the new raster into the layer panel. Double click on the layer, select “Source” and choose EPSG 3912 (National Slovene Grid). I usually duplicate the layer and make the lower one a hillshade and the upper one a semi-transparent singleband pseudocolour scheme. I also load GoogleMaps satellite imagery to check if the projection is right (Menu –> Web –> QuickMapServices –> Google; make sure to check the settings of this plugin, which allow you to get more services as a contributed pack…). Yepp, looks good. The Žužemberk Fault in all its glory and surrounded by the most amazing karst morphology.
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What else?
Well, downloading all the tiles for Slovenia like this is of course time-consuming. I once knew a very clever guy who wrote a small script that would allow him to download all the available tiles from the ARSO website. He then created a set of LiDAR chunks of just below 4 GB each that cover the whole country… Drop me a mail if you’re interested.
Florian | 2021-11-30|12:03 (UTC)
Hey, is it possible to have the set of Lidar chunks for the whole country?
I would be interested
Best regards
Florian, Computer Science Student
Paolo | 2021-12-03|10:26 (UTC)
I would be interested in a lidar image, Kostanjevica area -fajti thanks Paolo
Mat | 2023-01-25|15:05 (UTC)
Greetings,
great article, helped me a ton. Would it be still possible to get a script or Lidar chunks? Thank you
Josh | 2023-02-25|20:41 (UTC)
The Slovenian government site seems to be down/broken, I’d love to get the script/lidar data for the entire country if you still have it and are able to share. Thanks
Tommaso | 2023-10-03|15:33 (UTC)
Would it be still possible to get a script or Lidar chunks? Making a big project about the Country