National Elevation Data Strategy

The National Elevation Data Strategy

The National Elevation Data Strategy, led by Natural Resources Canada (NRCan), uses state-of-the-art technologies (e.g. LiDAR and satellite imagery) to increase availability and coverage of accurate high-resolution elevation data to support Government of Canada priorities.

NRCan collaborates with different partners (provincial and territorial governments, municipalities and Indigenous communities) to ensure the availability of existing data and to acquire new data across the country. This collaboration is essential for the success of the strategy’s objectives, and is building capacity for better data, science and tools across federal, provincial and territorial jurisdictions.

Strategy objectives

Higher resolution across Canada

Increase coverage of high-resolution elevation data across the country to support Government of Canada priorities.

Improve access

Facilitate access to Canada's elevation data by promoting open licenses and offering datasets to the public through Open Maps.

Capitalize on past and future investments

Promote sharing and usage of existing elevation data. Foster collaboration with many partners across the country to acquire new data.

Standardized elevation data

Develop and maintain Federal Guidelines for LiDAR Data Acquisition to ensure consistency across regions, which allows for accurate national analyses. It is continuously updated based on technological and scientific advances. This guide has become the Canadian standard for airborne topographic and topo-bathymetric LiDAR acquisitions across the country.

Elevation data products

Shaded 3D reliefs of a Digital Terrain Model (left image) and a Digital Surface Model (Right image). The DSM includes vegetation and buildings on the surface of the ground. These two examples of derived products are available in both HRDEM and HRDEM Mosaic products.

The National Elevation Data Strategy has led to the creation of many products such as:

Automatically extracted buildings
This data layer delineates building footprints that are automatically extracted from airborne LiDAR data, high-resolution optical imagery or other sources. The product includes information such as elevation and minimum and maximum building heights. The data is available on Open Maps.

LiDAR point clouds
This product contains point clouds from various airborne LiDAR acquisition projects conducted in Canada. The URL links of each point cloud file can be downloaded, read, visualized and/or used directly in software that has Cloud Optimized Point Cloud (COPC) file capabilities (Ex. QGIS v3.26 and more recent).

Data coverage highlights

Highlights of the current results of the National Elevation Data Strategy include:

• Integrated 1,034,000 km² of airborne LiDAR data covering 95 of Canada’s 100 largest cities.
• The data covers areas where over 92% of Canada’s population lives (about 36.6 million Canadians).
• 4.6 million km² of elevation data derived from satellite imagery were integrated in the North. This data comes from the ArcticDEM project (external link, only available in English) and was corrected to meet Canadian standards. The source data was provided by the Polar Geospatial Center under NSF-OPP grants 1043681, 1559691 and 1542736.
• Automatically extracted over 9.6 million building footprints from LiDAR data.
• Made over 130,000 km² of LiDAR data available in the LiDAR Point Clouds product. These datasets were acquired by NRCan or by partners funded through NRCan.

A map of Canada illustrating the current coverage status of elevation data acquired by all levels of government. LiDAR projects represented in green have been integrated into the Strategy. Near-shore bathymetric lidar data acquired by Fisheries and Oceans Canada are not shown on this map.

Reach out to us!

For more information, contact  geoinfo@nrcan-rncan.gc.ca