Office of the Premier
B.C. communities can look forward to high-quality data to support effective and informed decision-making on the planning and management of wildfires, landslides, floods and other natural events.
The Province is investing more than $38 million in a new program over the next six years to collect light detection and ranging (LiDAR) elevation data.
LiDAR is a modern survey method that uses aerial remote sensing technology to map the Earth’s surface. It delivers highly detailed and accurate three-dimensional mappings of landscapes. Unlike the Province’s current digital models of landscapes that are based on aerial imagery taken 30 years ago, LiDAR-based mapping includes detailed representations of forests, bodies of water, and buildings, as well as other infrastructure.
“Investing in better data means investing in better decisions for climate resiliency,” said Nathan Cullen, Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship. “Generating this invaluable data and making it freely available will keep people safe, and ensure communities are protected, productive and economically competitive.”
The Province currently makes a large collection of LiDAR data free and equally accessible to everyone in B.C. Gathering more LiDAR data will create better certainty for First Nations, local governments, communities, decision-makers, land-use planners and other stakeholders when planning for the impacts of climate change.
High-resolution mapping derived from LiDAR will provide information that is critical to a number of fields, including natural-resource management disciplines like forestry, wildfire and fuels, surface hydrology, agriculture, ecology, wildlife, habitat management and restoration, geology and geomorphology.
LiDAR information will also support meaningful reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples as shared decision-making in resource management relies on evidence-based decisions using the best available data.
Learn more about LiDAR, or to discover and download LiDAR data as it becomes available, visit: https://governmentofbc.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=d06b37979b0c4709b7fcf2a1ed458e03
Quick Facts:
- LiDAR data is collected from aircraft using sensors that detect the reflections of lasers.
- LiDAR data provides accurate 3D information for various mapping products, including digital elevation models, forest inventory analysis, floodplain analysis, infrastructure analysis, transportation analysis and many other applications.
- LiDAR data is openly and freely available to the public for 11% of B.C.’s landscape.
A backgrounder follows.
