3D Modeling of Culverts in Santa Fe County New Mexico

Recently, Santa Fe County acquired LiDAR across 3000+ square miles as part of their 2014 Orthophotography project. One deliverable, derived from the LiDAR bare earth surface, is a flowline network. The surface must be hydrologically conditioned to create the most accurate flow paths. One part of this conditioning is to “burn” culvert line features into the bare earth surface to allow the flowlines to model correctly across manmade surface features.

FME Workbench and Data Inspector is utilized to model and review linear culvert features and the newly conditioned surface. Utilizing LiDAR derived bare earth surface data, high resolution orthophotography, preliminary stream flowline network, and culvert research points, FME can combine the data into a rich and detailed 3d scene that can be quickly reviewed and provide feedback as to the quality of the hydrologic conditioning at a single culvert crossing.