Discussion: or if it is flown

don't give permission to use

Down here its more like charge an arm or a leg. I thought NSW was opening its lidar data?

After a flurry of user charges by govt agencies in the "rogernomics" years, local bodies even tried charging for use of parks for orienteering. Thankfully that phase was short-lived. Eventually Land Information NZ moved to free provision of its mapping data. More than that it banged the heads together of all the crown agencies which had imagery and set up an online platform to house it and make it available. There's other stuff there that I'm not familiar with, which is relevant to others - property boundaries, address register etc - which can be accessed on the fly and I think people are developing applications on top of them. The philosophy is that this promotes economic activity.

Elevation data is being put onto the same framework. So instead of going cap in hand to the local body which collects most of it, I'll soon be able to get it with the click of a mouse. Coverage will be limited to what public agencies are interested in. But our orienteering photogrammetrist gets very little work these days. Just as well, he's in his 70's.

Yes, that supposedly is the policy in Victoria- Open Data Access. There is a web portal and a requirement for agencies to put data there. Meanwhile, there is a section of one key agency that holds a heap of lidar. It has formed a consortitum. You contribute lidar and then you get access. It seems to be a way for them to get access to lidar from other bodies without having to invest. And they totally ignore the open access data policy. I imagine that because they hold data from non state govt agencies which have existing data access agreements, they argue the Open Data Access policy can't be applied to them.

Tossing up exploring the cost of joining the consortium.

Invis,
some NSW LIDAR data is freely available through a Creative Commons licence, on the Geoscience Australia ELVIS foundation website: http://elevation.fsdf.org.au/

The intention as I understand it is to have all of the existing NSW Spatial Services coverage available by the end of 2018. Currently the data available is a mix of 2kmx2km classified point cloud tiles, 2kmx2km tiles of 1m or 5m gridded data (MGA coords), and 5m gridded regional DEM as geotiff files (GA Lambert projection) derived from LIDAR. The coordinate transformation in the regional DEM has introduced some artefacts which show up as consistent banding in the levels, and some of the earlier geotiff appear to be surface models based on first return rather than bare earth.

It appears that the NSW data is becoming freely available faster than the changes to the changes to the Spatial Services web-site, as I was able to download 30sq km of cadastre data for free in 1 set of shape files (limit of 5 areas/day) without getting the promised notification of cost and request for credit card details. This is probably balanced by the privatising of the Land Titles section of the Department, which will lead to increased costs in land transfers.

Thanks for that Rockman! Very useful...

A few months ago I had an email chat to the guy who runs Elvis. In response to my question about Victorian data appearing on the site, his response was diplomatic. But the blunt message was- "We offered and they declined". So the issue is not a delivery platform.
Another chat today with a colleague who works in the same organisation as the Victorian data cartel. They requested data for a research project, but it only appeared after the requestor relayed his request several levels above the data custodian. They are not keen to share even internally. What hope do we have?
There is some Victorian DEM data on ELVIS. I have attempted to use it for two mapping projects. Is so coarse as to be useless. I found more use in the standard 20 metre contours on government maps.