Sonny's LiDAR Digital Terrain Models of Europe

[Maki]

There is a misunderstanding. When I say that  the Nice Cote d'Azur data is upsampled I'm not referring to your dataset but to the original one. Just render it as hillshading in QGIS and look at it wit 100% magnification: you'll see severe pixelation, which means the actual data has a coarser resolution, even if stored as a 5 meters grid original data is probably 20-25 meters or so. When resampled and reprojected to DEM standards it's very good of course.

The rest of France is 75 meters which means that a summit may appear several tens of meters off its real position. It is not a problem for OruxMaps use, but if you create contour lines from it it's far from ideal. Also using it for slope calculations could lead to fake results.

But, as you say, it's the best we have. It's a pity that IGN France still hasn't embraced Open Data because they have very good datasets.

[Sonny]

Ah ok, now I understand you. The difference of nominal resolution versus the objective resolution af a DTM. You're absolutely right!



A good example are the widespread SRTM datafiles. Its nominal resolutions are 1" worldwide nowadays. If you compare their level of details especially regarding narrow gorges or rocky mountain areas to those of 1"-files based on LIDAR data: The optical difference and improvement of richness of details is BY FAR better in the LIDAR-based DTM - although both models have the same nominal resolution of 1".



Regarding Cote-d'Azur and also all other source data I used in France you're right.



But the important question for me was: "Is the source-data an improvemnet in richness of details compared to the common used SRTM-files (or those of viewfinderpanoramas.org) ?".

And this question is true for Cote-d'Azur although its real resolution is not 5 meters for sure but somewhat coarse-meshed data. And this is also the reason why I published the DTMs of France at all: The 75m IGN-grid is far from optimum. But they are still a slight improvement in quality compared to the SRTM-files. I checked that before I started creating the French DTMs.

[Sonny]

I spent many hours and weeks to collect and edit the source data for creating a DTM for the whole country of Italy.

Most of the Italian regions provide more or less high quality data. For those who don't, I used 1" SRTM data. Now the project is finished and available here:



http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-italy">//http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-italy

[Sonny]

There's been a problem in the Northwest of the Italian files. Please download the corrected ones here:

http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-italy">//http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-italy

[Sonny]

Dear Oruxmaps-Friends,



I've spent lots of hours during the last months to collect, check and resample data. Just before Christmas I'm going to give you the result – several new DTMs – as a present:



Belgium:

http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-belgium">//http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-belgium



Denmark:

http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-denmark">//http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-denmark



Estonia:

http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-estonia">//http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-estonia



Finland:

http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-finland">//http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-finland



Lavia:

http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-latvia">//http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-latvia



Netherlands:

http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-netherlands">//http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-netherlands



Norway:

http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-norway">//http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-norway



Sweden:

http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-sweden">//http://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-sweden



Enjoy them within new maps, Sonny.

[Sonny]

As far as I know, I've now completed the list of European countries where Opendata LIDAR source data is available. If you notice that there are new European countries providing high quality Opendata DTMs in the future, feel free to contact me!



Finally something regarding myself: During the last 2.5 years I spent many, many Hundreds of hours during my leisure time to search for new Opendata source files. I've written hundreds of Mails – mostly in foreign languages ;-) – to contact public authority of the individual countries to help me with finding free and often hidden source data of their country. I had to download giant amounts of source data. I had to search for errors, plug holes within the data, compile, resample it and create files in useful formats. To provide them to you, the community for free.



It would make me very happy, if you honor this work by supporting me with a Donation. I've created a DONATIONLINK via PAYPAL:

https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=E6GG3NPU88ZQE&source=url">//https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=E6GG3NPU88ZQE&source=url



THANK YOU VERY MUCH, Sonny.

[Sonny]

I have created new files of Germany-Saxony, which you can download here:

https://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-germany">//https://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-germany

[Sonny]

After lots of hours of work, finally the latest version of DTMs of Spain are ready for Download:

https://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-spain

I therefor used the latest available source-files of the Spanish survey Institute. Most improvements are in regions which lack of LIDAR source data in the previous DTMs: Andalusia and the Balearic Islands.
Now the whole territory of Spain is covered by high quality LIDAR data.

[Sonny]

There's a new DTM, of Northern Ireland which you can download here:

https://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-united_kingdom

[Sonny]

Good news: After lots of hours research, contact with different institutes across the country, quality checks etc. there's for the first time a high-quality DTM of the whole United Kingdom

https://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-united_kingdom

For about 75% of England, Wales, Northern Ireland fine LIDAR source data available, Scotland
unfortunately (beside river valleys and coasts) is not covered as well. For the areas not covered with fine LIDAR-data I used OS DTM-50m which is wider gridded but also based on LIDAR source data and hence especially in wooden areas more accurate than SRTM data.

Enjoy the new DTMs of the UK!

[thommy24dd]

Hey Sonny, I am looking for N52E10 in your DTM's 1" but it seems to be missing in Europe and Germany aswell!?

[Sonny]

Since some weeks LiDAR source data of the whole territory of France in its finest resolution is available as OpenData. So during the last weeks I created enhanced DTMs of France:
https://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-france

Additionally Wallonia (Souther Belgium) also provides their LiDAR sources in its finest resolution as OpenData. So I created enhanced DTMs for Belgium too, now the whole country is complete in highest resolution:
https://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-belgium

Have fun, Sonny.

[LaurentG]

Hi Sonny,

thanks a lot for these files.
Just one point : this delivery for France (1") do NOT include N50E000.hgt that was present in previous deliveries, and is supposed to be present according to Gebiet(Area).png

Since this zone is almost 100% above sea (and very very little above ground), maybe it is volunteer to have removed this file, but I prefered to be sure you are aware of it, in case it's a bug.

Regards
Laurent

[Sonny]

You're right, this file is not included any more with France because it's just sea and land area of UK. I just updated the Gebiet (Area).png Screenshot

[Sonny]

I created a new DTM of Iceland:

https://data.opendataportal.at/dataset/dtm-iceland

Have fun!