The Adelaide-based Fugro LADS Corporation is the leading global provider of Airborne LiDAR Bathymetry services.  Having first developed Laser Airborne Depth Sounder (LADS) technology in the 1970s to help fulfil chart vast tracts of Australia's hazardous marine environment not able to be charted using conventional methods. 

Fugro LADS Corporation continues to meet this need with a long term contract with the Defence Department operating its RAN LADS system in Cairns and global contracts from governments and commercial enterprises. These contracts are generally for hydrographic mapping purposes, but also includes survey tasks for habitat mapping and for applications to manage the effects of climate change including coastal zone management.

Based in Technology Park north of Adelaide, Fugro LADS directly employs more than 60 people in Adelaide and its field offices in Cairns, Abu Dhabi and Biloxi, Mississippi in the US and has an annual revenue in excess of A22m.

Fugro LADS parent company, Fugro NV, based in Leidschendam in the Netherlands, is the world's leading services provider in the collection, processing and interpretation of data related to the earth's surface and soil composition and provides advice based on the results, primarily for the oil and gas industry, mining industry and construction industry. Other Fugro companies operating in Australia are based in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Worldwide, Fugro has approximately 13,500 employees in more than fifty countries that Provides the LADS business to greater markets and technologies worldwide.