New Zealand authorities are undertaking a new survey to improve the accuracy of records of land boundaries.

A team from Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) will spend the next two years capturing survey data to improve the accuracy of identified high-priority areas.

The Spatial Data Improvement Project will initially focus on improving the quality of data in urban and intensive rural areas, where information can be up to 100 metres out of place.

 The aim is to have 95 per cent of coordinates in the upgraded areas accurate to better than 2m, according to Jan Pierce, general manager customer services, LINZ.

The project involves extensive analysis of rural data, as well as consideration of feedback from a range of users of cadastral data, including surveyors, local authorities, GIS companies and the general public.

Ongoing work will increase the availability of high-accuracy digital cadastral data and enable organisations using the data to concentrate on innovative spatial processing products and services such as 3D or time-lapse modelling.

As areas identified for upgrade are completed, the corrected data is loaded into LINZ databases. These are made available on a monthly basis – so users can expect to benefit from the upgrades almost immediately.