Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1393937
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 18 JULY 2021 13 COMMERCIAL portance as it gives a reliable, visual snapshot that can assist in building awareness and making informed deci- sions." The process of revising the map – and ensuring it is kept current – has been a challenging one for Gauci and his team since the project's launch last year. "It has been a steep learning curve," he shares. "First, we had to identify an appro- priate software to process such a huge amount of data, which is very hungry in terms of memory. To give you an idea, a single village could have around 25,000 images to process. Then, we also need- ed to adapt to using drones, while over- coming the challenges of the pandemic and data protection. As part of the pro- cess, we trained drone pilots and con- formed to new drone legislation." In just over a year, the PA's team of around 15 people, which now includes five fully qualified drone pilots, has completed the imaging of all 14 ur- banised areas of Gozo and is current- ly starting work on mainland Malta. While refining its methodologies to ensure quality control, the team pivots its processes according to the archipel- ago's ever-changing terrain. Meanwhile, another aim of the pro- ject is also being addressed: to make the map's contents readily available to oth- er stakeholders in Malta. "Spatial data should not be the prerogative of the PA alone. This one basemap will be com- mon to all local entities from Transport Malta to the Water Services Corpora- tion, with each translating the data into spatial implications accordingly," ex- plains Gauci. "Sharing the basemap is vital. That's why we launched the SIntegraM portal in late 2019. Through an integrated ap- proach, we can work together to ensure Malta's assets are respected and incor- porated into every development deci- sion, which is especially important on such a small island. Better information leads to better planning – not to men- tion the time and monetary savings to be had as other entities will no longer need to collate this data themselves. It marks a huge shift in the way we do things in Malta." The SIntegraM portal and basemap are key deliverables under the €7-mil- lion project, which has been partially financed by the European Regional De- velopment Fund (ERDF). The project also seeks to improve pub- lic accessibility to the map's details and data, which has inspired the creation of a free online 3D map service via Cloud- isle.org. "Cloudisle is an online publication of LiDAR material, which is a technique used to estimate building heights. It is similar to sonar but uses laser light in- stead of sound to produce coordinates," clarifies Gauci in conclusion. "The Cloudisle concept is the result of a collaboration between the PA and the University of Malta to provide a representation of how a building might look within Malta's skyline using Li- DAR measurements. So far, we have conducted two LiDAR runs: the first in 2012 produced four billion points of da- ta, while the second in 2018 produced 38 million. The data is more refined because our instrumentation is as well. Through this tool and our wider pro- ject, we are offering greater transparen- cy to the public about Malta's terrain, both today and in years to come." The updated basemap of Malta may be accessed via the Planning Authority's website, www.pa.org.mt, through the ge- oportal link. Joe Gauci's team uses high-resolution orthographic 3D imagery and drones to build the volumes of data across the map's 18 layers and more than 50 different classifications with impeccable precision