85% of New Zealand’s most current, publicly held aerial imagery data has been opened up by Land Information New Zealand, for free reuse by the public, Land Information Minister Maurice Williamson announced recently.

LINZ has been working with other agencies since 2011 to make available such data under open licence.

“Until recently, only six per cent of New Zealand’s land area imagery was available publicly, and most government-held imagery was stored on internal systems,” said Mr Williamson.

“This made imagery data difficult to find and access – even when needed for nationally significant projects such as the Canterbury rebuild.

“Unlocking aerial imagery under open licence will lead to time and cost savings, and helps deliver on the Government objective to have all public sector agencies releasing high value public data for re-use,” said Mr Williamson.

Aerial imagery is a key piece of location-based information, and opening access to such information is central to the goals of the New Zealand Geospatial Strategy. LINZ is, therefore, intending to launch an online service in 2014 to provide improved access to the public sector’s imagery data.

You can find out how to acquire the various image sets here.