Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1394990
11 COMMERCIAL 22.7.2021 informed decisions." e 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. en, we also needed to adapt to using drones, while overcoming the challenges of the pandemic and data protection. As part of the process, we trained drone pilots and conformed to new drone legisla- tion." 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 other stakeholders in Malta. "Spatial data should not be the pre- rogative of the PA alone. This one basemap will be common to all local entities from Transport Malta to the Water Services Corporation, with each translating the data into spatial implications accordingly," explains Gauci. "Sharing the basemap is vital. at's why we launched the SIntegraM por- tal in late 2019. rough an integrat- ed approach, we can work together to ensure Malta's assets are respected and incorporated into every development decision, which is especially important on such a small island. Better informa- tion leads to better planning – not to mention the time and monetary sav- ings to be had as other entities will no longer need to collate this data them- selves. It marks a huge shift in the way we do things in Malta." e 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). e project also seeks to improve public accessibility to the map's details and data, which has inspired the crea- tion of a free online 3D map service via Cloudisle.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 instead of sound to produce coordi- nates," clarifies Gauci in conclusion. "e 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 data, while the second in 2018 pro- duced 38 million. e data is more refined because our instrumentation is as well. rough this tool and our wider project, we are offering greater transparency to the public about Mal- ta's terrain, both today and in years to come." e updated basemap of Malta may be accessed via the Planning Author- ity's website, www.pa.org.mt, through the geoportal 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