Elevation Data

All of the Estonian territory is covered by LiDAR collected elevation data of excellent quality.
For the first two rounds, scanning was done by Leica ALS50-II scanner at altitude 2400m. The third round in 2017-2020 with Riegl VQ-1560i scanner and at altitude 2600m. In addition, in each year, low altitude (1200m) ALS data is collected about Tallinn, Tartu and Pärnu areas and with two year interval about other towns. There are also summertime flights for forestry purposes covering 1/4 of the territory each year.

Schema 1. Springtime ALS data by year (at altitude 2400-2600m)
Data properties
Raw LiDAR format LAZ 1.4
Digital elevation model (DEM) format GeoTIFF, XYZ ASCII
Data structure dot cloud / raster / text / vector points, lines
Scale DEM grid sizes 1m, 5m, 10m, 25m
Licence Land Board Open Data License
Please refer to the Land Board and date when using the data. For example: "Elevation data, Land Board 2017-2020"

Raw LiDAR material is in LAZ format and digital elevation models (grid sizes 1m, 5m, 10m, 25m) are in GeoTIFF or XYZ ASCII format. DEMs include DTM, DSM, nDSM and CHM models. Latest DEMs are made from 2017-2020 ALS data. DTM is made of springtime flight data (including low altitude flights above towns) and DSM/CHM are using summertime flight data in addition.

There are also elevation lines (2.5m interval) and related elevation points bundled into Estonian Basic Map vector dataset.

All the elevation data is in EH2000 height system (EVRS - European Vertical Reference System), based on NAP (Normaal Amsterdams Peil). The closest vertical EPSG code is 5621. Horisontal reference system is EPSG:3301

Each LAZ file covers 1 km2 and the classification has been made automatically. Possible class values are:

1 - Unclassified
2 - Terrain (including flagged keypoints)
5 - First and middle reflections (mostly trees/ bushes)
6 - Buildings (points which fall inside the buildings layer of Estonian Topographic Database, starting from the year 2012 data )
7 - Noise (below terrain)
9 - Water (points which fall inside the water layer of Estonian Topographic Database, starting from the year 2012 data)
17 - Terrain under bridges (overlap bit)
18 - Noise (above terrain)


Last update: 03.03.2022 08:03
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