Key Project Datasets¶
Primary datasets used in our prject.
New Zealand LiDAR 1m DSM¶
- Description: A high-resolution surface model capturing the elevation of "first return" features, including the tops of buildings and tree canopies (920GB).
- URL: https://data.linz.govt.nz/layer/53621-nz-lidar-1m-dsm-2013-2024/
- Project Use: Used to calculate specific roof slopes and azimuths, and to model solar shading caused by local vegetation and neighboring structures.
- Limitations: Very large dataset.
NZ 8m Digital Elevation Model¶
- Description: A national-scale elevation model describing the bare ground level, excluding surface objects like trees or buildings (18.84GB).
- URL: https://data.linz.govt.nz/layer/51768-nz-8m-digital-elevation-model-2012/
- Project Use: Provides the foundation for low-granularity shading analysis caused by large-scale terrain and mountain ranges.
NZ Building Outlines¶
- Description: A dataset containing polygons representing the footprints of buildings across New Zealand (440MB).
- URL: https://data.linz.govt.nz/layer/101290-nz-building-outlines/
- Project Use: The primary dataset for identifying individual building locations and footprints for solar potential mapping.
- Future: Integrate NZ Building Outlines (All Sources) which seems to have more buildings, as well as duplicates.
Tile Index¶
The 1m DSM and 8m DEM are tiled using the New Zealand 1:10,000 tile index LINZ layer 104690, creating individual georeferenced tiles (typically ~4,800 × 7,200 pixels at 1m resolution).
Tiles are named using the format REGION_10000_INDEX.tif (e.g., BH31_10000_0403.tiff). This enables downloading only tiles covering your region of interest rather than entire national datasets.
Meshblock Higher Geographies¶
- Description: An administrative dataset that links individual meshblocks to higher-level statistical and local government boundaries (160MB).
- URL: https://datafinder.stats.govt.nz/layer/123519-meshblock-higher-geographies-2026/
- Project Use: Used to append administrative attributes to building data, enabling the aggregation of results by region or district.
Reporting Boundaries¶
| Boundary | Title | Aggregates |
|---|---|---|
| MB | Meshblock: Street Block (60–120 residents) | — |
| SA1 | Statistical Area 1: Neighborhood (100–500 residents) | MB |
| SA2 | Suburb/Township (1,000–4,000 residents) | SA1s |
| SA3 | Sub-District | SA2s |
| TA | Territorial Authority: Council/District | SA3s |
| REGC | Regional Council: Water Catchment Area | MB (does not always align with TAs) |
Accessing LINZ Elevation Data¶
Via S3 (Recommended for bulk access)¶
LINZ publishes elevation data as Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs in the public S3 bucket s3://nz-elevation (region: ap-southeast-2). Public access requires no AWS credentials.
Access methods:
- AWS CLI: aws s3 ls s3://nz-elevation/dsm_1m/ --no-sign-request
- s5cmd: s5cmd ls s3://nz-elevation/dsm_1m/
- GDAL: /vsicurl/https://nz-elevation.s3.ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/dsm_1m/...
Via STAC Metadata (Recommended for discovery)¶
LINZ publishes STAC Collections and Items for all elevation datasets. Use STAC to discover tile footprints and download links for specific bounding boxes:
- STAC Browser: https://data.linz.govt.nz/stac/v1/
- Python: Use
pystac-clientto query collections by geometry or spatial extent
Via LINZ Data.govt.nz¶
Direct download available from https://data.linz.govt.nz/, but large datasets are more practical via S3 or STAC discovery for programmatic workflows.
Processing Notes¶
- Projection: LINZ elevation data is natively in EPSG:2193 (NZTM2000). Processing uses this CRS directly (no reprojection overhead).
- Compression: Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs use LERC compression, enabling efficient streaming of specific regions.
- Tile Size: ~512 × 512 blocks for rapid tile access via HTTP range requests.