New Zealand

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A good collection of starting points (November 2012) was posted at thematic mapping blog - Mapping New Zealand - a summary.

Projection

• the most common projection used is the New Zealand Map Grid (NZMG)
  • truly unique - "the projection is conformal, but is otherwise unlike any other projection used for mapping."

Apps

• TUMONZ - The Ultimate Map of New Zealand
  • see Location-specific Software Packages

Source Data

• GeographX has some free data
  • including DEMs down to 250m and a shaded relief w/landcover
  • also have reasonably priced DEMs down to 20m
  • also sell a number of interesting derived products including 3D Maps for use with the K2Vi 3D Viewer
• The main government source for topographic and survey information is 'Land Information New Zealand' (LINZ).
  • The site includes large, detailed, downloadable, black and white aerial photos of much of the country, including the major urban areas
  • The topography page offers scanned maps of some of the country's offshore islands, a marvelous terrain map of the whole country drawn with pre-computer methods, and the promise of detailed topographic information online in late 2002.
• A great website to get an idea of the kind of data coverage that is generally available for purchase in New Zealand, but not yet often available on the web is that of local government agency Whangarei District Council.  Their site contains detailed topographic maps (excellent coverage from the main New Zealand 1:50,000 scale map series), LandSat satellite imagery, aerial photography of towns and cadastral maps for a good portion of northern New Zealand.
• The New Zealand Ministry for the Environment is currently working on a land environments classification project to map the environmental characteristics of the country. The web site for this project has some mapping available now, with more detailed information in the future.
• Toaster NZ
  • standalone application for browsing a collection of NZ topo maps and aerials photos
  • not 3D, but potentially a convenient way to get geospecific images for draping
  • costs NZ$100 to $630 depending on resolution, coverage, and other options
• Landcare Research hold and publish masses of environmental data and maps on the New Zealand environment, which can be obtained through their websites, though not much data is available online. The company also receives color NOAA satellite images ( from NOAA-12, NOAA-14, NOAA-16 and NOAA-17) and uploads them two or three times a day on this website.  This primarily provides weather information, but when the daytime images are not too cloudy a certain amount of landcover detail is visible.
• The Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences produces geological maps for New Zealand, but while their website has some interesting information on several topics (especially volcanoes) there is not a lot of mapping data available online yet.
• StreetCam3D
  • In 2012, Wellington mapping company Terralink announced they would scan all New Zealand streets over the next two years. using a truck with LIDAR "capable of recording the position and appearance of every object within 100 meters with pinpoint accuracy".
  • The plan is to capture the full 126,000 kilometres of roads, starting with the major cities.

Derived Data

• The Auckland Regional Council website has a five 'fly-through' VRML views of Auckland volcanoes (using Cosmo Player 2.1.1)
• The New Zealand GeographyNetwork is/was an ArcIMS server providing image-based browsing of landcover and roads for the whole country (seems to be offline in 2011)

Cities: Christchurch

• Australian company AEROMetrex/aero3Dpro announced in February 2013 a detailed 3D model of part of Christchurch (video), produced mainly from air and ground-based photogrammetry.

Cities: Auckland

• As of 2007, Auckland has a ''Digital Auckland' initiative to attempt to (1) make good broadband widely available and (2) expand people's ability to access (and visualize) digital city data
• "Auckland City Council member Richard Simpson's vision is to create a world-leading "geospatially indexed" web portal for council data and other information about Auckland. The idea revolves around the type of technology initiatives embraced by delegates at last year's international Digital Earth summit, held in Auckland."
• Joel Wilson in Auckland had a project to model the Auckland CBD (downtown).
  • As of March 2010, he was working with SketchUp to produce models that will display in Google Earth.  The design goal is to "give a roughly accurate impression of the Auckland skyline."
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