Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) and NIWA have been working with regional councils on how they can make rivers data more useful.
Both organisations recently held a workshop with Bay of Plenty Regional Council, Environment Southland, and Waikato Regional Council which looked at the potential for a new river network dataset.
Rivers data is useful for helping to understand and mitigate the impacts of floods, and LINZ is working to ensure New Zealand has geographic information that will improve our resilience to natural events. Rivers are also one of the high priority datasets identified by the Local Government Geospatial Alliance.
The next step is for LINZ to share ideas with other relevant agencies and to understand their preferences for a new river network dataset. This would inform LINZ on the priorities of this dataset and help with future work planning.
If you have any questions or ideas please contact Douglas Kwan at LINZ – dkwan@linz.govt.nz 04 830 2103