Get approximate point and pulse density of LASfiles

get_density() calculates the approximate average point and pulse density of LASfiles.

Usage

get_density(path, full.names = FALSE)

Arguments

path: Character. Path to a LAS/LAZ/COPC file, a directory containing LASfiles, or a Virtual Point Cloud (.vpc) referencing these files.
full.names: Logical. If TRUE, filenames in the output are full paths; otherwise base filenames (default).

Value

A data.frame with columns:

filename: File name or path.
npoints: Total number of points in the file.
npulses: Number of first-return pulses.
area: Area of bounding box (units of CRS^2).
pointdensity: Approximate points per unit area.
pulsedensity: Approximate first-return pulses per unit area.

Details

Only the LASfile headers are read. Densities are calculated based on the bounding box and number of points / first-return pulses. This does not account for missing data within the bounding box, so the density is approximate and faster to compute than reading the full point cloud.

Examples

folder <- system.file("extdata", package = "managelidar")
las_files <- list.files(folder, full.names = T, pattern = "*20240327.laz")
las_files |> get_density()
#>                             filename npoints npulses     area pointdensity
#>                               <char>   <int>   <int>    <num>        <num>
#> 1: 3dm_32_547_5724_1_ni_20240327.laz    2936    2606 309656.1  0.009481486
#> 2: 3dm_32_547_5725_1_ni_20240327.laz    3369    1340 347095.0  0.009706277
#> 3: 3dm_32_548_5724_1_ni_20240327.laz   10000    3426 988760.1  0.010113677
#> 4: 3dm_32_548_5725_1_ni_20240327.laz   10000    4247 987443.7  0.010127160
#>    pulsedensity
#>           <num>
#> 1:  0.008415787
#> 2:  0.003860615
#> 3:  0.003464946
#> 4:  0.004301005