[GIS] How to delete duplicate LiDAR points

Question

How can I delete duplicate LiDAR points? I incorrectly read the same las twice and saved as a one file resulting in duplicate XY points. How should I delete these duplicate points?

Answer 1

You can delete all duplicate points from a las, laz or ascii file using lasduplicate in LAStools.

Finds and removes all duplicate points from a LAS/LAZ/ASCII file. In the default mode those are xy-duplicate points that have identical x and y coordinates. The first point survives, all subsequent duplicates are removed. It is also possible to keep the lowest points amongst all xy-duplicates via ‘-lowest_z’.

It is also possible to remove only xyz-duplicates points that have all x, y and z coordinates identical via ‘-unique_xyz’.

Also, lasfilterduplicates in the lidR package (documentation p. 51):

lasfilterduplicates(las)

Filter points that appear more than once in the point cloud according to their X Y Z coordinates