lidalign 2.0.1

Python scripts for the alignment of scanning lidars in offshore (and onshore) environements

Lidalign Python Package

Welcome to the Lidalign Python package! This package contains some python scripts for the alignment and pointing calibration of scanning wind lidars offshore!

Mainly, the package contains python code for the following lidar alignment actions:

• North alignment using azimuth hard target mapping see Rott et al. 2022
• External Lidar alignment (pitch/roll) determination using Sea-Surface Leveling (SSL) see Rott et al. 2022
• Determination of a static elevation offset from Sea-Surface Calibration (SSC) --> publication currently in the making (and see Gramitzky et al. 2025)
• Scripts for the evaluation and visualisation of conventional hard target mapping

We do not claim full completeness and hope for contributions from the community.

The work is heavily based on previous work by Rott et al.22, which can be found in this zenodo repository.

Documentation:

For the documentation of the code and some examples, see the HTML docs of lidalign. This includes:

• Hard Target elevation mapping
• Sea Surface Leveling and Calibration
• Lidar north alignment

Experimental Validation of the SSC:

Also the experimental validation of Meyer et al. 2026 is documented as HTML version of the jupyter notebooks.

How to use:

For the installation, we recommend the use of Astral uv, a fast python package manager. Alternatively, you can replace the uv pip commands with python -m pip in the following.

Installation for direct use

Installation of the package (including the codes for the evaluation for the publication) is possible through:

uv pip install "uv pip install git+https://github.com/PaMeAn/lidalign.git"

Development

If you want to develop the packages, clone the repository first:

git clone https://github.com/PaMeAn/lidalign.git

and then install editable:

cd lidalign
uv pip install -e .

or

uv pip install -e .[dev]

The "-e" indicates, the package is editable, so scripts can be changed and updated. If you do not plan to contribute, you can install without -e.

How to cite

If used, please cite with the following:

Meyer, P. J., Rott, A., Seifert, J. K., & Schneemann, J. (2026). Lidalign python package (V.2.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19056909

The general work please cite with:

Meyer, P., Rott, A., Schneemann, J., Gramitzky, K., Pauscher, L., & Kühn, M. (2026). Experimental validation of the Sea-Surface-Calibration for scanning lidar static elevation offset determination, J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 3224 022049, https://doi.org./10.1088/1742-6596/3224/2/022049.

and

Rott, A., Schneemann, J., Theuer, F., Trujillo Quintero, J. J., & Kühn, M. (2022). Alignment of scanning lidars in offshore wind farms. Wind Energy Science, 7(1), 283–297. https://doi.org/10.5194/wes-7-283-2022

Contributing

If you made edits, please create branches and create merge requests, so the code keeps developing! If you find issues or you are missing functionalities, let us know in the issues!

We are happy about any feedback!