NWT Centre for Geomatics

Mackenzie Valley Air Photo Project 2004

Background

     

The Mackenzie Mapping Program for Northern Oil & Gas Development is a federal initiative lead by Indian & Northern Affairs Canada (INAC), with partners from other federal agencies, Government of the NWT, aboriginal land claim groups, and the oil and gas industry. The goal of the program is to provide current 1:30,000 scale colour aerial photography for the area of oil and gas development, supported by accurate updated DGPS ground control, new 1:50,000 or larger scale topographic maps with 1m contouring and a matching Digital Elevation Model (DEM), and a colour digital photo-mosaic of the Mackenzie Delta region and pipeline corridor to the Alberta- NWT border. It is anticipated that this information will be a primary environmental and mapping information resource for environmental management in the Mackenzie Delta region for the next 25 years. Program products (ground control survey data, individual photographs in digital form, delta region and pipeline corridor photo-mosaics, digital maps, DEM, etc) will be available at minimal or no cost via Internet (or with a minor reproduction cost for hard drive of digital data). Copies of individual prints, or entire sets of photos, are available from the photography contractor (See contacts below).

See maps of the "Completed Areas" here.

 

Data Distribution: At this time only orthotiles, contour and digital elevation models from mapping areas D5, D2 and D3A is available. See contacts, below for more information.

See a technical description of the photography, scanning and derived map data: PhotoMapOutline.pdf

     

Steps and status of the mapping program

     

There are several steps to the process of making this data set available

     

Completed

  1. Collect the air photos - This was conducted over the summer of 2004 and completed in September 2004. There are three sets of photos. The NWT Centre for Geomatics has one, the contractor doing the mapping work has one and Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Yellowknife has one.
  2. Post maps of the airphoto locations. See below
  3. Post Shape files of the airphoto locations. The updated shape file now has each photo centroid plus a link to the photo. Available in the downloads section under Mackenzie Valley Gas Project files section. MVGP_PhotoIndex.zip (updated Aug 23, 2005)
  4. Scan the airphoto prints - Completed March 2005 approximately 3.5 Terabytes of TIFF files. Not Geo-corrected
  5. Convert the scanned airphoto files to ecw format - Completed March 2005, 225GB of ECW files. Not Geo-corrected
  6. Make the airphoto ECW files available over the Internet. See the link below. April, 2005. Not Geo-corrected
  7. Make an update to the index maps to make the flight line, roll and photo number more easily readable. August 2005
  8. Make complete copies of the ECW files available on removable hard drives. Send requests to INAC-geomatics M. Snijders (contact information below)
  9. Issue tender to produce ortho-image images in TIF format, mosaic into tiles (ortho-image tiles), create contour lines and DEM of areas D2 and D5. March 2006.
  10. Quality check areas D2 and D5 products. July 2006
  11. Convert DRAFT ortho-image tiles of area D2 and D5 to ECW format. See the link below for online access. July 2006
  12. The contract was awarded in order to: ortho-image airphotos in PIX format, mosaic into tiles (ortho-image tiles), create contour lines and DEM of the MVAP area. July 2007.
  13. Post completed delta area Contour and DEM files to the downloadable files list. Aug 2006
  14. Post updated contour and DEM files May 2007. MVAP File Access
  15. Post completed delta area ortho-image tiles to the downloadable files list. June 2007
  16. Set-up the completed delta area ECW files for download from this web site. October, 2007.

     

In Progress

  1. Contractor working  to produce: ortho-image tiles, 1m contour lines and DEM of the remaining area in the Mackenzie River Valley.
  2. The work is in progress. All this data should be should be available by Fall 2008.

     

Future Work

  1. Make individual TIF files available for download. This is unlikely to be available in the near future.

     

Frequently asked questions

  1. Can I get the tif files? There are no plans to make copies of selected TIFs or all TIFs available on removable hard drives.
  2. What products are available? There are 4 products available. The scanned air photos, the ortho-image tiles, contour lines and digital elevation models. The scanned airphotos (not georeferenced) are available for all areas. At this time the remaining products are available for areas D2 and D5 only.
  3. How much space is required to store the files? We have the image files available in ECW format only. The ECW files retain most of the quality of the tifs but only require about 15% the amount of space. Each photo is 0.8 GB for TIF or 50MB for the ECW. There are 4511 airphotos ecw files available using 225 GB of space.
    When the ortho-image tiles are created they range in size from 3-150 MBytes. Areas D2 and D5 total 26 GB.
  4. Where can I get the particulars on the cameras used? Two cameras were used. Wild_RC_20_UAGA-F_13181.pdf Zeiss_RMKA_TOP15_150633.pdf

 

Air photo index

The following is a list of index maps of the air photos taken. Click here to see a sample jpeg of an index map. Maps updated June 6, 2005.

     

There is a shape file available in the downloads section under Mackenzie Valley Gas Project files section. MVGP_PhotoIndex.zip (updated Aug 23, 2005) that has all the centroids with links to tthe photos.

Index 1a 4.8MB
Index 1b 3.0MB
Index 2 4.2MB
Index 2a 5.4MB
Index 3 3.9MB
Index 4 3.0MB
Index 5 1.3MB
Index 6 1.1MB
Index 7 1.2MB
Index 8 1.0MB
Index 9 0.8MB

Photo project overview map

Online access to the air photos

There are approximately 4500 images. Each image is approximately 800 Megabytes in size. This is about 3.6 Terabytes or 3,600 Gigabytes or 3,600,000 Megabytes of data. A single image will fill a CD-ROM or take about 44 hours to download with a dial-up connection. Making these images available to the government and public users is a challenge.

     

Note: To use the next page you must be registered on our system, this can be done at no charge by clicking on the "create a UserID" button. If you already have an account you may just need to login.

Access to all the air photos and ortho-image tiles

     

Contacts:

For permission to order airphoto prints from the airphoto contractor or to order a copy of the ECW images on a USB drive fill out this release form.pdf and contact MVAP Expert Technologist (see contact information below).

     

At this time we can only provide complete sets of digital data. If the online access described in the "Access to all images" link does not meet your requirements,then we can copy the data to your external hard drive. If we do this you will receive: All the ortho-corrected image tiles (30GB), All the non-corrected images (241GB), all the contour files (7GB) and all the DEM files (2MB). The images will be in ECW format only. The contours are shape files and the DEM are DTED format. Total space required 280GB.

     

For Technical enquiries related to the Data, Progress or Future plans:
Contact:
MVAP Expert Technologist
GIS Specialist
Information Management Group
Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Yellowknife
Email:
mvap@inac-ainc.gc.ca

     

Access to data or other Internet issues:

Geomatics Systems Specialist

NWT Centre for Geomatics

Government of the NWT

600-5102 50th Ave

Yellowknife NT X1A 3S8

Email: gnwtmaps_admin@gov.nt.ca

PH: 867-873-7501

     

Potential collaborations on science applications:
Jesse Jasper
Meteorologic Services of Canada
Environment Canada, Yellowknife
Tele: (867) 669-4740
Email: jesse.jasper@ec.gc.ca

     

This page updated last on Oct 22, 2007.

     


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