ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS 20 years of the National Topographic Database

摘要

In June this year, it was 20 years since we first achieved national coverage of the New Zealand Topographic Database. At the time to have national coverage with 1:50,000 scale topographic mapping data like that was pretty much a world first. Along with initiatives like the first iteration of Landonline, that meant New Zealand was truly world leading. While I'm no doubt biased, nevertheless I suggest it's pretty incredible that the database survives pretty much in a similar structure to when it was first designed more than 20 years ago. I think there are some lessons to be learnt from that.