How to display dynamic raster (lidar) data on a Web map?

Question

I have some high quality LiDAR data. I need to process it dynamically, and update a field (not elevation field) depending on my input and elevation at that point. Once this is done, I need to display this raster data on Web Map (Bing Map, Google Map etc.) as real time as possible. Here is what i have been able to do till now: I have come up with some scripts using ArcGIS Python Lib, that process my lidar clips, add a field , update that field according to the input coming in. So now i basically have all the points on raster classified into 3 categories every 5 mins. If i view this raster in arcGIS i can view nice 3 colored raster overlapped on a base map.

But now i need to render these raster clips on a Web map. My first though was to polygonize these classified clips and display the polygons on a JavaScript Map. But polygonization takes a lot of time, and thus its eliminated.

Now Other option I have is to to use GeoServer's Raster rendering capabilities to display the images. Then use this WMS i created, to overlap it on Bing Maps. This is where i am stuck. I have no clue how to automatically get Rasters that Geoserver supports, like Geotiff, jpg200o etc from my ADF files, render them on open layers first, then try to overlap them on bing maps.

If someone knows of any good tutorial that does this kind of rendering of dynamically changing rasters on map , will be great if you could point me to it.

Also if there are some other better approaches to get this kind of system in place, Please suggest. I am open to almost any solution.

Thanks

PS: I am pretty good at web programming, web services,databases and scripting etc. But new to working with Lidar and Geo-Rasters.

Answer 1

GeoServer can supply your Web Application Network KMZ - in real-time.

There is a very good 'Visualize Lidar in Google Earth' page here

http://www.cs.unc.edu/~isenburg/googleearth/ (Martin Isenburg & Jonathan Shewchuk)

key point is:

"we create the 10 by 8 tiling of 10 feet contours gilmer.kmz (c,d) in only 20 minutes using less than 100 MB of main memory and no temporary disk space from 357 LAS files (provided by West Virginia View) that contain a total 156 million LIDAR points.

Once your data is ready you can then use the Network KMZ from Geoserver

Example of Google Earth on the web with this Network KML is: http://code.google.com/apis/earth/documentation/samples/kmlnetworklink_example.html