Tag: Lidar

Additional vertical aerial imagery for Digimap

ecls/ / Data Changes & Additions, Digimap News, Of Interest
Night time aerial imagery of London Waterloo and the London Eye
Night time aerial imagery of London Waterloo and the London Eye

We recently made available, through the Digimap Lidar Collection, a wealth of Vertical Aerial Imagery data captured by the Environment Agency for England.  The Environment Agency has been capturing vertical aerial imagery since 2006 on a project by project basis, so the coverage is not continuous across England. Availability grids for each year of data are available in the Lidar Download application. Data is available in some locations for multiple dates where the location has been surveyed on more than one occasion.

Some of the imagery was captured at night time giving an insight in to the effects of urban light pollution.

Data format

The data is supplied in the raster ECW (enhance compressed wavelet) format, which should be readable by most modern GIS and image processing software.  The data is tiled and tile sizes range from 1km x 1km to 5km x 5km and the resolution of the data ranges from 10cm to 50cm. There are three types of imagery available:

  • True colour – red, green, blue (RGB)
  • Near Infra-Red (NIR)
  • 4-band (RGBN)
RGBN aerial imagery of Spurn Head in Humberside
RGBN aerial imagery of Spurn Head in Humberside

Access

Lidar download is available to all institutions that subscribe to Aerial Digimap, meaning that subscribing institutions now have access to another detailed aerial imagery dataset.

For information on subscribing to Aerial Digimap, please see the subscription page.

 

If you have any questions about the new data or Digimap please contact us:

  • Email: edina@ed.ac.uk

Lidar Digimap: new collection of data available now!

ecls/ / Data Changes & Additions, Digimap News, New Features

LidarToday we have launched our new Lidar Digimap Collection. The new Collection is available to preview for all Digmap users until the 31st of July 2017. Lidar data can be downloaded through the Lidar Download for use in GIS and CAD applications; there is no Lidar Roam application for viewing the data.

Lidar Point Cloud Forth Rail Bridge
Lidar Point Cloud Forth Rail Bridge. Crown copyright Scottish Government, SEPA and Scottish Water (2014).

The service allows you to download current and past Lidar data from the Environment Agency (EA), Natural Resources Wales (NRW) and Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA).

There is already a large amount of data available in the service but we are still processing some of the datasets. Once it has all been processed the service aims to have complete coverage of all the data available from these agencies, including the raw LAS point cloud data and Orthophotography captured during the flights (where available).

Lidar data is very useful when creating 3D terrains and models as can be seen from the images to the left and below. For creating 3D scenes such as the one below, it is very useful to use a Digital Surface Model (DSM) to create a surface and hillshading from which you can drape other data over, such as the imagery from Aerial Digimap in this example:

3D scene with Aerial imagery and Lidar
3D scene showing imagery with hillshading derived from the 50cm Lidar DSM. © Getmapping Plc, © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2015. All rights reserved.

The following datasets are available through Lidar Digimap at present:

Dataset Availability and publication date
Digital Terrain Model and Digital Surface Model (DTM and DSM) England

  • 25cm: 2009-2015
  • 50cm: 2009-2015
  • 1m: 2010-2016
  • 2m: 2010-2015

Scotland

  • Phase 1 (1m): 2011-2012
  • Phase 2 (1m): 2013-2014

Wales

  • 25cm: 2015
  • 50cm: 2009-2016
  • 1m: 2010-2016
  • 2m: 2010-2016
Point Cloud Scotland

  • Phase 1: 2011-2012
  • Phase 2: 2013-2014

 

We are currently processing the following datasets and hope to have them available in the service shortly:

Dataset Availability and publication date
Digital Terrain Model and Digital Surface Model (DTM and DSM) England

  • Historical data: 1998-2015

Scotland

  • 50cm
  • 2m
Point Cloud England

  • 2005-2016
Orthophotographs England

  • 2006-2015

 

The data was collected for flood risk analysis and modelling and primarily follows water courses and coastal habitats. The data covers approximately 72% of England, 20% of Scotland and 70% of Wales. The image below shows the 1m resolution DTM coverage in England:

1m DTM Lidar coverage in England
1m DTM Lidar coverage in England [click to expand]
We are also very keen to know what you have been doing with Lidar data in the past or what you plan to do with the Lidar data you are going to get from the new service. To find out this information from you we have put a survey in the interface and you have the chance to win a £20 Amazon just for filling it in!

Digimap Lidar Survey

Lidar Options

We hope you like using the new Collection, if you have any questions about the data please contact us:

  • Email: edina@ed.ac.uk