How the Notre Dame Stadium seat and sun data is measured

Every number comes from a USGS lidar survey of the stadium, NOAA solar equations, the official Notre Dame stadium maps and published row lists. Nothing is estimated from photos or copied from ticket sites.

Sources

Stadium shape: USGS 3D Elevation Program lidar, Indiana Statewide 2017 collection (flown 24 March 2017, tiles 01702350 and 01702345). First-return points gridded to 1 m, noise removed.
Section positions and shapes: the official Notre Dame 2026 stadium maps (Level 1, Level 2 and Mezzanine), which are drawn to scale and lined up with the field in the lidar.
Row lists, chairback rows, team sides and the student section: rateyourseats.com section notes.
Gates, bag rules, first aid, parking and tailgating: fightingirish.com.
Sun: NOAA solar position equations. Weather: ERA5 reanalysis and forecasts via Open-Meteo.

How shade is computed

Each section is sampled on 3 lines (left, centre, right) at every row, 8304 seat points in total. For each point the surrounding stadium surface is scanned in every direction the sun can come from to give a horizon profile. A seat is in direct sun when the sun is higher than that horizon. Games are sampled every 10 minutes for 3.5 hours.

How rows are placed

A line is walked out from the field through each section until the lidar surface jumps up by more than 4 m, the wall of the buildings behind the top row. The lower bowl and upper level form one continuous slope on each side, split by the mezzanine walkway, so the two rings are stacked front to back on it. Row depth is the measured slope length divided by its rows, so rows always land on measured concrete. Row depths range from 0.6 to 0.924 m.

How the seat views are made

Each view is drawn from a 3D model built from the lidar, from 1.15 m above the seat (seated eye height), facing the field.

Limits

The lidar was flown in March 2017, as the Campus Crossroads buildings round the stadium were finishing. The bowl and the three buildings are complete in the survey, but anything changed since is not in the shadow model.
Section numbers follow the current official maps; the lower bowl was renumbered when benches were replaced in 2017.
Suites and the press box are not modelled as seats. Light poles and video boards thinner than the 1 m grid may be missed.

Downloads (CC BY 4.0)

sun-by-section.csv: game, kickoff, section, minutes of sun, shade arrival
sections.json: section geometry and row-by-row sightlines