LiDAR has moved from a survey instrument to a data backbone for cities and infrastructure operators.
This is the practitioner view: what changes when point clouds are no longer one-off captures but a continuously-updated record of the physical estate.
Asset management
The catalogue of pipes, poles, and platforms becomes geometry the algorithm can act on. Defect detection, sag monitoring, and clearance checks all collapse to queries on the point cloud.
Sustainability reporting
Tree canopy, green-space density, embodied-carbon estimates from structural geometry — all inputs to the auditor’s table next year.