RO-LiDAR GeoQuickView: A Web Platform for Exploring Public LiDAR-Derived Elevation Data in Romania
AIPR assessment
Problem difficulty is moderate rather than frontier-hard: public LiDAR portals and web-GIS viewers are a known space, but the Romanian data fragmentation and source-aware harmonization problem give the work a real practical niche. The strengths reinforce each other well, because the platform is concrete, the workflow is readable, and the use case is immediately understandable. The main weaknesses also compound, since the paper has limited quantitative validation, no usability study or external a
Abstract
Public elevation data can support landscape research, environmental interpretation, planning, education, and public engagement, but their practical reuse is often limited by fragmented delivery and specialist processing requirements. This paper presents RO-LiDAR GeoQuickView, an independent, voluntary, and non-commercial Web-GIS initiative for exploring and reusing publicly accessible elevation data in Romania. The platform integrates LiDAR-derived digital terrain models (DTMs) and complementary elevation models of different resolutions, publishes standardized hillshade visualizations for immediate browser access, supports participatory landscape documentation, and provides a spatial index for direct raster retrieval. Its most detailed currently integrated component is the 0.5 m LAKI III Zone A DTM coverage for Caras-Severin, Gorj, Mehedinti, and Dolj counties. LAKI III Zone B, comprising Suceava, Neamt, Bacau, and Vrancea counties, is the next scheduled high-resolution extension. It will be integrated after the public products become available and pass through the same harmonization and quality-control workflow. The platform also incorporates LAKI II and additional public altimetric sources through a source-aware processing workflow that accommodates different acquisition units, including one-kilometre cells and larger raster blocks. The paper documents the data architecture, harmonization steps, quality-control procedures, access modes, application range, and limitations. The platform is conceived as an accessibility layer over public data infrastructures: it supports rapid discovery and preliminary interpretation, but it does not replace official products, specialist modelling, expert review, or field verification.