UK 3D mapping data to be made freely available to app developers by Environment Agency
Environment Agency joins Ordnance Survey in releasing LiDAR information as open data
The UK Environment Agency (EA) is to make its LiDAR data sets freely available as open data to commercial entities from September this year.
LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) is a technique that uses a laser to measure the distance between the survey aircraft and the ground surface. It is used to measure the elevation of the land as well as buildings, roads, railways, power lines and vegetation. From LiDAR data accurate 3D models of the terrain can be built up. It is typically used for environmental and land-use modelling, flood monitoring, asset management and urban planning.
The EA has accurate elevation data covering approximately 60 per cent of England and Wales. Much of this has been available to selected non-commercial entities for two years, but from September the agency will make the LiDAR data freely available to all users, including commercial app developers and the general public.
The impetus to make this data more widely available was last year's floods that devastated many parts of the country.
Marketing officer Susan Winter told SPAR Point Group what it hopes to achieve.
"Following the floods of 2014, the Environment Agency made a decision to look at all the data sets and work out the feasibility of making them open. So they set up a data advisory group, which consists of members of the Environment Agency and lots of other interested parties from government and other organisations and they have been looking at the issue of open data for the last year."
The LiDAR is data is "one of the datasets that was considered to be of the highest priority and will bring the highest environmental benefit", Winter added.
App developers will now be able to use this dataset to develop their own tools, for example to create flood warning or planning tools or to add fine-grained elevation data into existing mapping applications. The data has a vertical accuracy of 5-15cm with spatial resolutions ranging from 0.25-2m.
The EA holds many other many other datasets, some of which will also be released as open data in the future.
Ordnance Survey (OS), the state-owned mapping agency, is also making more mapping data - including geospatial information - freely available to the public. OS was one of the first government bodies to release information as open data when it made a number of mapping datasets available in 2010. Since then its datasets have been downloaded one million times and are used by Google Maps and Garmin, among others.
Recently OS launched OpenMap, a vector dataset which is accurate to the building level and is freely available for download, with the stated aim of allowing developers to build new products and enhance existing apps that use geospatial data. However, OS's more detailed mapping data remains usable only by paying customers.
Open Data Institute co-founder, Sir Nigel Shadbolt, is enthusiastic about the value of geospatial data in the public domain.
"Geospatial data, in particular, has enormous potential to transform peoples' lives," he said recently.
"From creating a more sustainable built environment, to effectively targeting public services, this kind of open data enables the most creative developers and entrepreneurs to deliver social, economic and environmental value."