November 18, 2008 -- 1Spatial is delighted to announce their involvement in Land Information New Zealand’s NZTopo50 project, which will facilitate the production of an updated 1:50,000 scale map series.

Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) is the National Mapping Organisation responsible for providing up-to-date topographic mapping (digital mapping data and hard copy land maps at a variety of scales) to support the needs of defence, emergency services, and the constitutional framework in New Zealand. The organisation is also responsible for collecting, maintaining and managing an authoritative national record of the physical features of the natural and built environment.

LINZ is a longstanding customer of 1Spatial and has been using their Gothic technology since 1995 to manage and maintain topographic data. The NZTopo50 project will enable LINZ to produce printed 1:50,000 scale maps directly from a seamless Gothic database, via a fully integrated pre-press flowline. Features within the new flowline include:

• A text clash detection tool to assist with text placement and additional tools for manually resolving any subsequent text clashes
  
• Intelligent cartographic feature representation
  
• The inclusion, for the first time, of Māori Macron font for text labels
  
• The collation of the map sheet components before printing to a number of formats including PostScript, TIFF, GeoTFF and PDF

The implementation of the new flowline will enable LINZ to achieve their goal of producing a 1:50,000 scale map series, featuring 452 maps in total, to replace the current Topographic NZMS260 series. In doing so, they will meet their publishing objective of printing a map series that meets New Zealand’s core topographic requirements and primary customer needs. It will also enable LINZ to make electronic versions of the maps available via the LINZ website, as well as directly to the emergency services’ databases.

The entire new series will be launched together, including the electronic versions, in September 2009, and will be in a new A1 size, portrait format. The new maps will be based on NZGD2000, the latest geodetic datum that was adopted in 2001 and is already being used for digital 1:50,000 data. Updating the paper map series in line with the new datum, and therefore the digital data, will restore consistency to the datasets. Consistency among all users should lead to improved public safety, better land management and coordination of resources.

Fran McNamara, Project Manager at LINZ, said:

“The 1Spatial project team were a pleasure to work with. They listened carefully to our requirements and have provided us with a practical, cost-effective solution that is tailored specifically to suit our needs and help us achieve our goals. By working in partnership with 1Spatial to develop a fully integrated pre-press flowline, we have streamlined our operations and made cost savings through being more self-reliant than ever before.

We recently produced our first prototype prepress map using the new flowline, and the results were fabulous! We were very pleased with the text placement, the relief, and the masking; and were particularly impressed with the way the automated cartographic enhancements operate without altering the underlying data - everything looked great. Thank you to the whole team at 1Spatial for a job well done!”

Duncan Guthrie, Managing Director of 1Spatial, added:

“The LINZ team were very clear on their requirements and had a very practical attitude towards the project. This kind of approach increases the efficiency and effectiveness of the project, to the benefit of both the customer and 1Spatial. The NZTopo50 project represents another step in our ongoing relationship with LINZ, which we hope will continue as they look to provide both maps and data on-demand in the future.”

To view a draft version of one of the new map series, visit the LINZ website at: http://www.linz.govt.nz/topography/projects-programmes/topo50-project/prototype/index.aspx
You can also track the progress of the project online via the LINZ website at: http://www.linz.govt.nz/topography/projects-programmes/topo50-project/about/update/index.aspx