England’s entire landscape will be mapped with lasers to tackle flooding, help conservation work and even track illegal waste dumps, the Independent reports.  

 

Under plans unveiled by the Environment Agency, aircraft equipped with laser scanners will map all 130,000sq km of the country in 3D, including rivers, fields and national parks by 2020.

The data gathered will be used to understand flood risk and plan flood defences and will also be made available for free for the public and industry including archaeologists, urban planners and even gamers.

The new data will be better quality than ever before with the whole country mapped at a one metre resolution using the most up-to-date laser technology to reveal the terrain more clearly.

The “lidar” – light detection and ranging – technology, which measures the distance between the aeroplane and the ground to build up a picture of the terrain, can be used to detect sudden landscape changes which could even indicate illegal tips.

In 2014 eight people in Cornwall were fined for dumping thousands of tonnes of waste which was discovered using lidar data.

For more on this story go to http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/england-mapped-lasers-flooding-waste-dumps-a8134156.html

 

* Many homes and businesses now have a pack of FloodSax sandless sandbags so they are ready for any flooding emergency. They are space-saving to store but can be transformed into sandbags within minutes simply by adding water. 

Around two million have now been sold worldwide.