%N 4
%J IEEE Latin America Transactions
%D 2014
%P 590-595
%K Image processing, bathymetric LIDAR, Radiative Transfer Model, sea bottom classification.
%V 12
%T Sea Bottom Classification by Means of Bathymetric LIDAR Data
%I IEEE
%A Jesus Velasco Gomez
%A Iñigo Molina Sánchez
%A M.Estibaliz Martínez Izquierdo
%A Águeda Arquero Hidalgo
%A Juan Francisco Prieto Morin
%L upm33100
%X Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) provides high horizontal and vertical resolution of spatial data located in point cloud images, and is increasingly being used in a number of applications and disciplines, which have concentrated on the exploit and manipulation of the data using mainly its three dimensional nature.  Bathymetric LIDAR systems and data are mainly focused to map depths in shallow and clear waters with a high degree of accuracy. Additionally, the backscattering produced by the different materials distributed over the bottom surface causes that the returned intensity signal contains important information about the reflection properties of these materials. Processing conveniently these values using a Simplified Radiative Transfer Model, allows the identification of different sea bottom types.  This paper presents an original method for the classification of sea bottom by means of information processing extracted from the images generated through LIDAR data. The results are validated using a vector database containing benthic information derived by marine surveys.