May 17, 2013 -- Getmapping has won a bid to supply Scottish Government with matched ‘True Colour’ (TC) and ‘Colour Infra-Red’ (CIR) orthorectified digital aerial imagery covering the complete land area of Scotland. This includes all Scottish islands, coastal structures and 10km across the border with England. Image resolution will be 25cm GSD (Ground Sampled Distance) per pixel. The contract runs for four years to 2017 and includes existing imagery as well as updates so that all imagery is within 3 years old from 2016 onwards.

Getmapping will provide high quality orthorectified aerial imagery and product support services for use across the Scottish public sector. The data will be supplied in a number of ways to ensure it can be applied to a wide range of business applications. This includes direct supply for onsite use, in GIS compatible file formats and as both a Web Map Service (WMS) and as a Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) compliant with the INSPIRE directive’s view service standards. Users will be able to order as a complete dataset, by individual local authority boundary or specific area.

Scotland is notoriously difficult to survey from the air for a number of reasons, the main one being the variable weather. High latitudes also mean a limited flying season due to less than optimal sun angles. In the early spring and late autumn the sun angle reduces the amount of available survey time to less than 90 minutes per day. Getmapping brings over a decade of Scotland – wide survey experience to the contract to ensure maximum capture is achieved during the weather windows available every season.

“We have had a commitment to aerial data acquisition in Scotland since 2003 and we were the first commercial company to achieve full country coverage including the Shetlands, Orkneys, St Kilda and other islands in 2011,” said Dave Horner, Managing Director of Getmapping. “From day one, eligible Scottish public sector organisations will have access to our complete True Colour aerial archive, much of which has been captured in the last three years. Under this contract the Scottish public sector will continue to benefit from the comprehensive update programme, technical support and our market leading hosted services,” explained Horner.