Media release
Date: 11 September, 2009

NRC To Give Away Aerial, Geographic Data

Northlanders are to be granted access to hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of aerial photography and other local authority geographic information system (GIS) data.

In what is believed to be a first for a Regional Council in New Zealand, the Northland Regional Council has decided to grant access to roughly 90 percent of the data currently on its GIS databases. (The remaining data is either owned by other organisations, is subject to privacy issues or the Council cannot contractually release it.)

Regional Council Systems Programme Manager Carol Cottam says as people have become more familiar with GIS applications in recent years, the Council has been receiving ever-increasing number of requests from people keen to secure its GIS information.

“Developments like Google Maps, Google Earth and others have also increased public awareness around the potential of maps and mapping software.”

The Council – which has been investigating the possibility of releasing the information since late last year - expects its offer is likely to appeal to a raft of would-be users. These include businesspeople, private individuals, farmers (who increasingly use farm mapping GIS software to manage their farms) planners, consultants, engineers, GIS professionals, ratepayers and others.

Mrs Cottam says both local and central government agencies had traditionally believed GIS information should be sold to meet or help offset what had often been the quite considerable costs of collecting it.

“However, trends are changing…globally there’s a move to make data more available and affordable, which in turn encourages sharing, collaboration and empowers others to add value to the data.”

Similarly, Northland aerial photography data – collected at a cost of several hundred thousand dollars between 1999 and 2006 – is now being superseded with much cheaper satellite imagery available from the Government’s KiwImage (subs: crrct KiwImage) project.

The NRC is now accessing that data from defence officials for just a few thousand dollars annually.

Mrs Cottam says making GIS data more accessible to ratepayers – who can then source information themselves - will also free up considerable amounts of Regional Council staff time currently spent meeting requests for this data.

A New Zealand-based company specialising in hosting map data has offered to host the NRC’s information via its website: www.koordinates.com/maps/northland

“There will be two types of data available. The first is NRC-produced data (which will be provided for free) and includes things like Regional Water and Soil Plan layers, Regional Coastal Plan layers, flood susceptible areas etc.”

The second lot of information is the aerial photography which will be available for a small fee to cover Koordinates’ hosting charges.

“It will probably cost someone about $2.50 to download aerial photos of a 200 hectare farm.”

The Regional Council itself won’t make any money from the distribution of its data.

ENDS

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