LIDAR data processing for the inventory of the railway infrastructure

Classic methods of geodetic and diagnostic measurements performed for railway purposes are characterized by the time-consuming nature of data acquisition. In the case of highly complex structures, such as railway stations, it is not easy to collect comprehensive information about the inventoried structure. Hence, there has been a marked increase in the demand for and use of modern measurement techniques such as mobile and aerial laser scanning wherever a compromise between quality and speed of information acquisition is required and achievable. The publication demonstrates the possibility of using aerial laser scanning technology for the inventory and modeling of railway infrastructure. The stages of processing point clouds obtained in different coordinate systems in the TerraSolid program environment are presented. The transformation of point clouds between the “1992” and “2000” systems resulted from data obtained for a 2130 m long section of railway line in Bochnia, in the Małopolska Province. The density of the source point clouds was 11 and 17 points/m2, respectively. The transformation of the clouds into a single coordinate system allowed for the creation of a point cloud with an average density of 28 points/m2. The dense point cloud created as a result of the transformation to the “2000” system was the basis for performing an inventory of the railway infrastructure and a 3D model of the studied object using MicroStation and TerraSolid software.