The project reformats England's official Digital Elevation Model data into Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs alongside Spatio-Temporal Asset Catalog indexes. This architecture lets users query specific spatial subsets or broad overviews without transferring massive, unneeded archive files. Announced at the FOSS4G UK 2026 conference, the platform also enables real-time dynamic rendering such as hillshading and live rescaling directly in web browsers. It covers both Digital Terrain Models representing bare ground and Digital Surface Models showing vegetation and structures.
Key points
Cloud-native geospatial formats eliminate the friction of traditional size caps and cumbe…: Cloud-native geospatial formats eliminate the friction of traditional size caps and cumbersome government bulk-request systems.
Users can stream and mosaic elevation coverage efficiently using standard tools like GDAL…: Users can stream and mosaic elevation coverage efficiently using standard tools like GDAL and Python without local bulk storage.
Transferring half a million tile equivalents demonstrates significant community demand fo…: Transferring half a million tile equivalents demonstrates significant community demand for accessible nationwide elevation datasets.
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At the FOSS4G UK 2026 conference in October, I gave a talk announcing that I’d re-released the Environment Agency DEM data for England in cloud-native formats. This was covering some work I did for my client Rebalance Earth and that we’ve decided to release openly.
If you already know what I’m talking about then you can find the data on Source Cooperative as COGs with STAC indexes. The README on that page will explain how to access the data, and you can access an interactive webmap of the data too. If that didn’t make full sense to you, then read on…
I’m not going to go into full details here, as sometime soon the video recording of my talk at the conference should be released, and I can link to that here. In the meantime, my slides are available and may help with understanding some of what I explain below.
So, basically, the Environment Agency (EA) collect LiDAR data across England and process it to produce Digital Elevation Model (DEMs). DEMs are rasters where every pixel contains a height value,…
Geographic data specialist Robin Wilson has converted England's official elevation datasets into open, cloud-native formats hosted on Source Cooperative. The initiative removes previous download restrictions by allowing researchers and developers to access custom areas directly through standard spatial programming libraries. Since its conference debut, the platform has surpassed one million downloads and delivered terabytes of terrain data.
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