In an effort to combat flooding, fight illegal waste dumping, and uncover hidden landmarks, the UK’s Environment Agency will be mapping and digitally recreating the entirety of England by scanning the country with laser-equipped planes. 75% of the landscape has already been mapped, but full coverage is not expected until 2020.



The data gathered will be freely available to the public and used by other government agencies and industries, including archaeologists hoping to uncover lost Roman roads in the North and even game developers building virtual environments for players to explore. Eleven terabytes of data is already available online, attracting more than 500,000 downloads.

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Source: [H]ardOCP – Laser-Equipped Aircraft to Map England in 3D