National LIDAR Programme

Published by:
Environment Agency
Last updated:
28 October 2022
Topic:
Not added
Licence:
Other Licence
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Summary

The Environment Agency National LIDAR Programme aims to provide accurate elevation data at 1m spatial resolution for all of England by the end of 2021. The country has been divided into approximately 230 logical blocks with survey starting in November 2016. Surveys are undertaken during winter months (approximately November to April each year) and published through the DEFRA Data Services Portal.

LIDAR is an airborne mapping technique which accurately measures the height of the terrain and surface objects on the ground, through the use of a scanning laser that measures the distance between the aircraft and the ground. From this remote sensing technique we produce a number of products available to download:

LIDAR Point Cloud: is the discrete LIDAR returns that are used in the creation of the surface models. Supplied in *.laz format they the discrete LIDAR returns have been classified into ground, low, medium and high vegetation classes using an automated classification process.

Digital Surface Model(s) (DSM) are created from the last or only LIDAR pulse returned to the sensor and contains all ground and surface objects.

Digital Terrain Model(s) (DTM) is created from the last return LIDAR pulse classified as ground, filtering out surface objects. Manual filtering is undertaken on the DTM to improve the automated classification routines to produce a most likely ground surface model. Areas of no data, such as water bodies, are also filled to ensure there are no gaps in the model.

First Return Digital Surface Model(s) (FZ DSM) is created from the either the first or only LIDAR pulse returned to the sensor and contains all ground and surface objects. It is more likely to return elevations from the top or near top of trees and the edges of buildings. It can often be used in canopy height modelling and production of building outlines.

Intensity Surface Model(s) (Int DSM) is a measure of the amount of laser light from each laser pulse reflecting from an object. This reflectivity is a function of the near infrared wavelength used and varies with the composition of the surface object reflecting the return and angle of incidence.The intensity surface model produces a grayscale image where darker surfaces such as roads reflect less light than other surfaces such as vegetation.

All products are available in 5km tiles aligned to the ordnance survey grid. The tiles are named by the unique survey id, OS grid reference and the first and last survey date of the survey id (PXXXXXOSOSOSSDFLOWNEDFLOWN.*). The surface models are available in GeoTiff raster format whilst the point cloud is available in *.laz. An index catalogue is also available with provides survey specific information about each tile. Attribution Statement: © Environment Agency copyright and/or database right 2015. All rights reserved.

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Data links

Link to the data Format File added Data preview
Survey_Data_FAQs N/A 28 October 2022 Not available
Metadata Index Catalogues - WFS N/A 28 October 2022 Not available
Metadata Index Catalogues - WMS N/A 28 October 2022 Not available
Metadata Shapefile Index Catalogues - Download N/A 28 October 2022 Not available
National_LIDAR_Programme_Survey_Download N/A 28 October 2022 Not available

Additional information

View additional metadata
Added to data.gov.uk
2022-10-26
Access contraints
There are no public access constraints to this data. Use of this data is subject to the licence identified.
Harvest GUID
2e8d0733-4f43-48b4-9e51-631c25d1b0a9
Extent
Latitude: 55.816° to 49.943°
Longitude: -6.236° to 2.072°
Spatial reference system
http://www.opengis.net/def/crs/EPSG/0/27700
Dataset reference date
2019-03-25 (creation)
2021-11-02 (revision)
Frequency of update
quarterly
Responsible party
Environment Agency (pointOfContact)
ISO 19139 resource type
dataset
Metadata language
eng
Source Metadata
XML
HTML

Contact

Enquiries

https://support.environment.data.gov.uk/hc/en-gb

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Licence information

Open Government Licence