The Regional Ministry for Ecological Transition, the Fight against Climate Change and Territorial Planning of the Government of the Canary Islands, through the public company Cartográfica de Canarias (Grafcan), has updated the historical orthophoto service on the web platform of the Canary Islands Spatial Data Infrastructure (IDECanarias) with the addition of a new image of the island of Lanzarote from 1977. The orthophoto, with a resolution of 50 cm/pixel, was produced from an analogue black-and-white aerial survey.
This highly valuable snapshot joins others already produced for different islands in the archipelago, which can be accessed through the viewer (https://visor.grafcan.es), in the specific ‘Históricos’ (Historical) section. The 1977 analogue aerial survey was donated by the Documentary Collection of the Association of Cabildos of the Province of Las Palmas.
An orthophoto is a geometrically corrected aerial photograph that can be used to take real measurements. This is because it is an accurate representation of the earth’s surface, in which the distortions inherent to aerial images have been rectified.
The main exponent of the islands’ strategy for disseminating geographic and territorial information is SITCAN, which brings together services and products on territorial information accessed through its various web platforms, including the Canary Islands Spatial Data Infrastructure (https://www.idecanarias.es), the Territorial Information Sales and Download Service (http://tiendavirtual.grafcan.es) and the Open Data Portal (https://opendata.sitcan.es).