UK coverage at 50cm to 1m resolution for various dates from the 1930s onwards including UK-wide post war surveys from 1946 to 1952, city, county and district wide databases with a variety of film and print archives also available. Sources include R.A.F., U.S.A.F. and Luftwaffe. Small areas of France were also covered. The data were acquired by the Landmap project from The GeoInformation Group's (TGG) Cities Revealed project. The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) funded Landmap service which ran from 2001 to July 2014 collected and hosted a large amount of earth observation data for the majority of the UK. After removal of JISC funding in 2013, the Landmap service is no longer operational, with the data now held at the NEODC.

Created from original film where possible, sourced from several archives, this database represents the very best of RAF, Luftwaffe and USAF aerial photography flown during 1939 to 1952. Images were then mosaiced together to produce regional coverage for various areas. Close inspection of some of the images will show where the images were created using printed images as printed annotations are visible. While in other cases prints are visible on the margins of the original film shown.

The historic aerial photography is available to UK academics and students. To apply for access, please

• 1) Register as a CEDA user. If you already are a CEDA (or NEODC or BADC) registered user, skip this step. If you have forgotten your CEDA user ID and/or password, please contact the helpdesk at support@ceda.ac.uk.
• 2) Apply for access to the Landmap data. Application involves the agreement with the Landmap terms of use.

Data are available in ecw (Enhanced Compression Wavelet) and MrSID (Multiresolution Seamless Image Database) formats which can both be opened with most image viewing/editing or GIS software such as such as Erdas ER viewer. Both formats are ultimately compressed images however the MrSID (Multiresolution Seamless Image Database) format (.sid extension) allows large compressed raster image files (such as aerial photographs or satellite imagery) to be quickly viewed without having to decompress the entire file. The data are archived in the directory structure of country/region_year/format/data for ease of use. Metadata containing location and other information (.ers, .sdw and .xml files) are included with their respective data files.

Software

Erdas ER viewer, available free of charge, can be used to open raster image formats such as TIFF, GeoTiff, IMG, ECW, ERS, ALG, DAT and many more, and is capable of handling large file sizes.

Documentation

• The GeoInformation Group Cities Revealed historic aerial photography product sheet

Links to further information

• The Landmap project historical aerial photography website - this site may be offline after 1st August 2014 due to a withdrawal of JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) funding, see below for an archived version of the site
• An archived version of the Landmap project historical aerial photography website, hosted by the Internet Archive project
• The GeoInformation Group website

If you have queries about these pages or about obtaining the historical aerial photography from the NEODC then you should contact the NEODC Support team. Your query should be answered within one working day. When follow-up work is required, the NEODC support team will carry out the work as quickly and efficiently as possible.