top of page

Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) National LiDAR Project Update


The capture phase of the national PGF LiDAR project is well underway across a number of the eight regions involved - Bay of Plenty, Canterbury, Hawkes Bay, Marlborough, Southland, Tasman, Waikato and West Coast.

The tender process was wrapped up late last year with 2 vendors– Aerial Surveys Ltd and iXBlue – chosen to capture and process this nationally significant data set.

Despite a month-long no flying period during the COVID-19 lockdown, some favourable flying conditions in in late autumn/early winter has meant good progress is being made in this 4 year programme.

What’s so great about this LiDAR?

Lidar is changing the paradigm of terrain mapping and has many applications in areas such as forest inventory, flood modelling, hydrology, geomorphology, urban planning, landscape ecology, coastal engineering, survey assessments, and volumetric calculations. 

The LiDAR captured as part of this project will all be captured at LINZ National Standard specification. With Auckland, Wellington, Gisborne and Northland already captured and Otago and Taranaki expressing interest in Tranche 2, NZ will have a seamless, consistent, national elevation data set.

National Data Storage Project

There will be little capture possible during the winter months so the focus will be on data processing and storage. Councils will start receiving data for their regions over the coming months.

The LGGA has started discussions with LINZ about a potential partnership project to establish a national cloud data storage facility. While the LINZ Data Service is able to store DEM and DSM’s derived from the LiDAR, the point cloud data will be too large for the LDS infrastructure.

The goal of this work is to have one place where data for all regions is stored and all products - DEM, DSM and Point Cloud - are made freely available in an easy to access manner for all. Keep an eye out for updates on the LGGA webpage.

bottom of page