SHOALS Toolbox

Scanning Hydrographic Operational Airborne Lidar Survey (SHOALS), is a state-of-the-art advancement in survey technology developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The airborne mounted system uses Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology to collect bathymetric data. Using this technology, SHOALS can rapidly perform hydrographic and topographic survey over large areas, far exceeding the capabilities and efficiency of traditional survey methods.

SHOALS data files are imported into SMS using the SHOALS File Import Wizard as either mesh nodes or scattered data sets.

The geometric data from a detailed survey such as a SHOALS survey can be useful to evaluate morphological trends, evaluate beach stability and several other coastal processes. To utilize this data, SMS contains the a collection of tools known as the SHOALS toolbox. This toolbox includes the import wizard to bring the data into the system, data filtering tools to eliminate redundancy in the data, and data extraction tools via the SHOALS Coverage to process the data into a format to be used with profile analysis and other similar tools.