The MRSP Southeast module required that the motte at Castlemore, Co. Carlow be surveyed. The site is exceptionally overgrown and the ground surface fragile and badly eroded by animal burrows.

This meant conventional approaches such as GPS or total station survey would be extremely difficult and time consuming so an innovative approach to survey was applied. The Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) was used from a number of ground positions, including the summit, to “blitz” the site gathering as many topographic points as possible, generating a dense 3D point cloud. Using GIS analytical tools the point cloud was converted to a gridded data, and then processed to remove the majority of any above surface vegetation. With some minor manual editing a satisfactory surface model was generated. The field survey was completed in 2 days, and a far more detailed model achieved than would’ve been possible without considerable time and effort spent removing vegetation from the site.