When electronic computers entered New Zealand government offices around the turn of the 1960s, they encountered extensive survey, mapping and land records. This large, untidy and highly organised inheritance consisted of survey pl
Read chapter →Maps · people · technology
A history of GIS
in New Zealand.
Read the chapters in sequence, explore a period, or follow the people and organisations behind the work.
44 chapters531 people167 events
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All themes →From paper cadastre to LandonlineFrom aerial photographs to routine observationLocal government GISOpen source and open dataBecoming a GIS professionFrom specialist system to connected stackWomen in GIS
Begin the book
Contents →The first electronic computers used in New Zealand government work handled calculations and data processing. The map mostly stayed on paper while the numbers went into the machine. Surveying, geodesy and engineering already genera
Read chapter →By the late 1970s, the Department of Lands and Survey was using a computer-assisted system to convert cadastral mapping into digital form. A paper cadastral sheet was fixed to a large digitising table, control points were establis
Read chapter →In October 1975, the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research’s Physics and Engineering Laboratory in Lower Hutt received a Landsat II scene of New Zealand for the organised national investigation programme. Dr M. C. Probi
Read chapter →In 1973 the Ministry of Works and Development began the first edition of the New Zealand Land Resource Inventory, usually shortened to NZLRI. The programme brought together several kinds of physical land information and mapped the
Read chapter →On 26 June 1989 a national conference opened in Wellington under the title Getting it all together with GIS. The published proceedings described it as the First National Multi-Disciplinary GIS Conference and ran to 116 pages. The
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