UK-Wales Elevation Model

Coverage for the DTM model for Wales – 5 m grid. Black dots represent existing wind turbines in Wales.

Wind farm at Mynydd Clogau, Wales. Transparent areas are where no LiDAR scans are made. If loading the data in an elevation grid object, these areas can easily be void-filled with other sources such as the 50m gridded data from OS Land Form or OS Terrain.

Introduction

The UK - Wales Elevation model in 5m grid resolution is a digital terrain model (DTM) produced from higher resolution LiDAR scans originally obtained from the Natural Resources Wales. The original model at 2m resolution is named ‘LiDAR Composite Dataset – DTM – version 2m.’ The derived elevation model delivered with windPRO is at 5m resolution – and is bi-linearly resampled by EMD to obtain a slightly coarser resolution - 5m – this is done in order for the data to be operational for the large areas needed in the context of wind farm analyses. Coverage for the data is approximately 70% of the country.

Dataset Overview

• Spatial Coverage: 70% of the UK-Wales territory
• Resolution: 5 m
• Data-type: Digital Terrain Model (DTM)
• Coordinate system (original data):
  • Horizontal: OSGB36 British National Grid (EPSG: 27700)
  • Vertical: Elevations recorded above Ordnance Datum Newlyn
• Version: Data downloaded in June 2019.
• Vertical Accuracy: N/A
  • The following accuracy statements was provided by the Natural Resources Wales for the LiDAR datasets (at higher resolution). For the 5m gridded data, expect a slightly lower accuracy.
  • Vertical (height): Specifications requires RMSE of 0.15m or better. More recent surveys have shown the error to be 0.05m.
  • Horizontal (planar): Absolute spatial error is 0.40m

Usage Notes

1. Download and processing time is in the order of minutes - so please be patient! Due to the large amounts of high-resolution elevation data and the tile-based storage system, you will experience that downloading the data for a site may last a few minutes. Please consider downloading 'smaller' areas (say 10km x 10km instead of 20km x 20km)
2. Since only 70% of the territory of Wales are covered by the LiDAR scans - you may need to void-fill some areas. If you download the data into an elevation grid object, these void-areas can easily be filled with other readily available sources such as the 50m gridded data from OS Land Form or OS Terrain 50.
3. Higher resolution data exist for selected areas in the region based on more recent LiDAR surveys: These are in resolutions from 0.25m to 2m – and may be accessed directly from the geodata-portal of Wales (see link below). More information about the Wales Lidar products can be found in the LiDAR Guidance document from the Natural Resources Wales.

Availability from within windPRO

The data are available directly from within windPRO in 5-meter grid resolution. The data can be accessed from the online-services in the following objects:

• Line Object (with purpose set to height contour lines)
• Elevation Grid Object

License and Attribution

The product belongs to the open geospatial data of the Natural Resources Wales. The data are licensed under a under a ‘Open Government License for Public Sector Information’. This license is compatible with the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0. Please use the following attribution when using this dataset:

Source: Contains Natural Resources Wales Information ©.  Natural Resources Wales and database right. 
Adapted and distributed by EMD and windPRO.

Acknowledgements

• The Welsh Government, Natural Resources Wales and the public of Wales are thanked for producing this digital elevation dataset – and disseminating it in the public domain and thus for aiding the development of renewable energy.
• Integration of this dataset into EMD services was co-supported through the InnoWind project ([http://www.innowind.dk www.innowind.dk) which is co-funded by the Danish Innovation Fund

External Links

• Geodata from the Wales: http://lle.gov.wales/home
• InnoWind project - http://www.innowind.dk