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New mapping tools helping navigate the region’s future

Glenda Darling looks at LiDAR as one of the building blocks helping us navigate the way forward in a changing world. A long with husband Mat, she has a passion for bringing people’s surroundings closer to them by transforming complex data into clear maps telling more in-depth regional landscape stories.

The couple operate Black Dog Geospatial in Invercargill, and are among the many businesses, organisations and individuals benefitting from regional investment in LiDAR (light detection and ranging) modelling for Southland, which offers substantial benefits, as the region plans for the future.

“Now we've got a really accurate representation of what the ground surface looks like through tools like LiDAR, so we can do a whole lot more,” Glenda says.

LiDAR refers to an airborne remote sensing method that uses pulsed laser to measure variable distances to the earth, generating a precise, three-dimensional layer of the earth's surface and features.

High quality information is an important foundation for decision-making and LiDAR provides critical data that can be used to map and model changes to the environment.

Previous elevation maps only had contours down to 8m, whereas LiDAR has allowed us to zoom right down to 1m in rural areas and up to 20cm contours in some urban areas.

Glenda says a good example of the benefits LiDAR offers is its use in modelling floods, where it was easy to measure a peak but not so easy to measure the volume of water.

LiDAR allows people to measure volumes much more accurately by being able to see a 3D image of the bottom of the river.

The mapping technology is helping us visualise our region in new ways to assist with more informed decision-making.

It can be very helpful for making decisions about residential and commercial development, renewable energy generation and managing things like on-farm nutrients and precision forestry spraying.

This data is useful across the likes of surveying, engineering, construction, communication, and archaeology.

“LiDAR can also be a more than useful tool for farmers to make quick decisions on farm, such as where to put a fence”, Glenda says.

There are also conversations happening with insurance companies, which are interested in high quality data as they continuously monitor market risk.

“Having highly accurate information can work both ways, because with more accurate knowledge comes more certainty,” she says.

Mat says interest in LiDAR and the wider field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has seen the Southern Institute of Technology introduce a night class for people wanting advanced practical training on using GIS.

“There’s people who are doing it for professional development capacity, so across industries and councils, but you’re also seeing people from DOC, rūnanga and even a geography teacher enrolling,” he says.

Great South GM Strategic Projects Steve Canny says they are routinely using LiDAR for a wide range of purposes as it gives more confidence in project decision making and more certainty around managing risk.

Environment Southland GIS team leader Geoff Welch says the vast majority of Southland, excluding the National Parks, has been LiDAR mapped.

“LiDAR data will greatly improve council projects such as hazard planning, policy, compliance, community advice, farm mapping and management plans, as well as understanding landscape change and hydrological processes such as stream flow estimation and catchment size.”

He’s encouraging people to check out the LiDAR maps on the Environment Southland natural hazards portal.

“You can even check what the view will be from a location where you want to build a new house,” he says.

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