Management and visualization of laser scanning point cloud data based on the virtual global platform

This paper provides a new solution to manage and display the massive LiDAR point cloud data based on virtual global platform, either airborne or terrestrial LiDAR data, which helps understanding the overall conditions of the collected data from different sources. Given overall consideration of management and virtualization, the study designs the out-of-core multi-resolution data structures. The structures for airborne and terrestrial LiDAR data are discussed separately, due to the different ways of data acquisition and different scales. The data structures are used to implement a LiDAR data management and display module in the virtual earth system - GeoGlobe, which is a spatial information sharing platform developed by Wuhan University.