Giving New Zealand the Edge in Airborne LiDAR

Aerial Surveys is proud to announce a major investment in the Teledyne Optech Galaxy Edge+ LiDAR sensor, bringing a new level of airborne LiDAR capability to the New Zealand market.

This investment marks another significant step forward in our long-term commitment to advanced aerial survey technology. It builds on the tremendous success of our Teledyne Optech Galaxy Prime sensor, which helped Aerial Surveys deliver more than 120,000 square kilometers of LiDAR elevation data and derived products across seven regions of New Zealand. The Galaxy Edge+ is the next leap.

For Aerial Surveys, this is not simply a sensor replacement. It is an investment in capability that will help support the next generation of elevation data, infrastructure mapping, environmental monitoring, emergency response, and resilience planning across New Zealand.

One of the most exciting advances is real-time onboard LiDAR processing and quality control. This allows LiDAR data to be processed and assessed while the aircraft is still operating, giving our team much earlier confidence in capture quality and helping reduce the time between flying and usable outputs.

We see this as transformational, particularly when responding to emergency events.

After floods, slips, storms, coastal impacts, or infrastructure damage, decision-makers need accurate information quickly. The ability to process and quality-check LiDAR data in flight has the potential to significantly improve how quickly high-quality geospatial information can be made available when it matters most. Aerial Surveys believes this is the first capability of its kind in New Zealand.

But real-time onboard processing is only part of the story. The Galaxy Edge+ also brings broader advances in LiDAR capture performance, data quality, and operational efficiency. These improvements will support a wide range of applications, including regional mapping, infrastructure corridors, utilities, forestry, engineering, environmental management, natural hazard assessment, and long-term planning. New Zealand’s landscapes are complex. Dense vegetation, steep terrain, remote infrastructure, coastal environments, and rapidly changing weather all create challenges for airborne survey. Investing in better technology helps us deliver better data, more efficiently, across more demanding conditions.

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It is also important for New Zealand to maintain strong local capability in specialist aerial survey. High-quality geospatial data is now critical to how the country plans, builds, responds, and adapts. That capability needs to be available locally, reliably, and across the year — supported by experienced people who understand New Zealand conditions, standards, terrain, and client needs.

By investing in world-leading technology here in New Zealand, Aerial Surveys is helping support a sustainable local geospatial industry. This ensures councils, government agencies, infrastructure owners, engineers, and industry partners have access to advanced airborne survey capability backed by local expertise and long-term commitment.

The Galaxy Prime helped change what was possible for large-scale LiDAR mapping in New Zealand. Now, with the Galaxy Edge+, Aerial Surveys is taking the next leap forward.

In the coming posts, we will share more about the successful implementation of the new sensor and some of the technological advances that make this such an important development for New Zealand’s geospatial sector.