The NITF format is used primarily by the US Department of Defense and supports many kinds of data inside a generic wrapper. The NITF 2.1 version added support for LIDAR point cloud data, and the NITF file reader supports reading that data, if the NITF file supports it.
The dimensions produced by the reader match exactly to the LAS dimension names and types for convenience in file format transformation.
Note
Only LAS or LAZ data may be stored in the LIDARA segment. PDAL uses the readers.las and writers.las stages to actually read and write the data.
{
"pipeline":[
{
"type":"readers.nitf",
"filename":"mynitf.nitf"
},
{
"type":"writers.las",
"filename":"outputfile.las"
}
]
}