Digital Elevation Committee

The committee works to promote the creation of statewide digital elevation data that is consistently accurate and available to the public, and advises MnGeo.

The Digital Elevation Committee was formed under the auspices of the former Minnesota Governor's Council on Geographic Information on September 20, 2006, continuing the work of Minnesota's Digital Elevation Working Group which functioned for years on a mission to improve Minnesota's elevation data. The LiDAR Research and Education Subcommittee formed in August 2010.

Committee status report, Nov. 13, 2012 (p. 2-3)
 

Important links

• Minnesota Elevation Mapping Project
  LiDAR data collection project, 2010-2013
   
• First-stop information page to find Minnesota elevation data and maps
  • Education and training resources
  • Uses of LiDAR data in Minnesota
     
• LiDAR Research and Education Subcommittee
   

Committee co-chairs

Tim Loesch, Minnesota Dept. of Natural Resources, 651-259-5475, tim.loesch@state.mn.us
Ron Wencl, U.S. Geological Survey, 763-783-3207, rwencl@usgs.gov

• Work plan
• Meeting schedule
• Committee activity reports and meeting minutes
• Publications and links
   

Work plan

Strategies:

• Assist in the development of partnerships that support data collection projects
• Deliver technical standards and information to partners to ensure coordinated data collection
• Support data services that host data resources and deliver them economically

Goals:

Deliver

• Maintain the committee's website containing all critical documents, white papers, guidelines, policies and best practices to meet a statewide elevation data goal
• Advise the work team that is overseeing the Minnesota Elevation Mapping Project, especially in the areas of critical technical specifications, data collection costs, and guidelines to guide budgets
• Compile and report on uses of LiDAR and other elevation data in Minnesota

Support

• Work with DNR and others to determine requirements to serve very large elevation databases
• Establish architecture to optimize data access
• Establish governance policies that assign roles and responsibilities for data import, maintenance and access applying that architecture
• Work with the LiDAR Research and Education Subcommittee to review issues relating to standards, user needs for education, and similar topics.

Meeting schedule

Calendar:  Check the calendar for details of the next committee meeting. If none is listed in the next month or two, check directly with the committee chair. All meetings are open to the public and visitors are always welcome.
 

Committee activity reports and meeting minutes

Publications and links

• Statewide Elevation and Imagery Inventory: Contribute to this community effort to gather and share information about existing and planned data projects for two vital data layers.
• LIDAR project:  Red River of the North Basin, Phase 1:  Project information and sample documents.
• Reality Check: Processing LiDAR data by Tim Loesch, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources:  This presentation from the 2006 Minnesota GIS/LIS conference reviews the steps used to process LIDAR data from the Red River watershed and covers general lessons learned. Available in:
  • PowerPoint slide format (14 MB)
  • PDF format (7 MB)
• Red River Basin Mapping Initiative letter of support (February 28, 2007) from the Governor's Council on Geographic Information for a proposed International Water Institute project to collect high-resolution elevation data for the U.S. portion of the Red River Basin.
• Developing a High Resolution DEM and Floodplain Mapping Program:  June 2002 white paper from DNR - Division of Waters (715K, PDF).

Return to MnGeo committee page