Aerial mapping company Bluesky International has been awarded a contract by Natural Resources Wales, on behalf of Welsh Government, to capture a high resolution laser mapped aerial survey of the whole of Wales.
Working alongside Natural Resources Wales and Welsh Government, Bluesky will capture the data at a resolution of 2 points per metre before processing and delivering LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data for more than 20,000 square kilometres of rural and urban landscapes. The Bluesky LiDAR data will be employed in a range of policy areas including flood modelling, forestry management, coastline monitoring, urban planning and archaeological conservation.
“Historically LiDAR data has been acquired over Wales at various points in time from the 1990s onwards,” commented Paul Isaac, Project Manager at Natural Resources Wales. “However, since these datasets have been collected for different reasons a patchwork of data exists that is inconsistent in terms of capture technology, coverage and resolution. Also, many of the high altitude, mountainous areas have not been captured at all resulting in key habitats and ecosystems remaining unmapped.”
“This pattern of largely uncoordinated acquisitions would likely have continued with different programmes and projects funded from various sources,” he added. “Therefore, rather than different public sector bodies securing data individually – leading to inefficiencies and discrepancies – Welsh Government proposed to capture one consistent dataset to cover the whole country. A further key driver for the projects is the wider economic benefit as organisations and individuals will no longer have to fund separate data capture.”