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Géoportail and 3D
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- Interview with Patrick Leboeuf
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Interview with Patrick Leboeuf
Online information-service manager at the French National Geographical Institute and coordinator of the Géoportail program.
What extras does land relief bring to internet users?
Patrick Leboeuf :
Patrick Leboeuf: The main advantage offered by 3D is that it makes it easier to read and understand the terrain. Interpreting an aerial photograph or a map is no simple matter: maps portray relief with contour lines that join up all the points of the same altitude. They have been the despair of countless generations of schoolchildren who just couldn’t understand how it worked. As a professional, I can see contour lines and imagine what the land actually looks like because that’s my job. But for most people, they just make the map harder to grasp. 3D means we can forget about contour lines and immediately understand the terrain: I can see straightaway if my village is at the top of a mountain or the bottom of a valley. A practical example of the uses of 3D is when you’re planning a hike: for instance, if I want to walk the GR20 in Corsica, with 3D I can see straightaway if it’s going to be very hilly or not.
Multiple uses
Who else is 3D useful for apart from ramblers?
PL :Town planners. If you’re a mayor, you have to find sites to build on in your commune and alter your development plan accordingly - all of which is made a lot easier if you have a global 3D vision of the area, no matter how well you know the surroundings. All sorts of zoning regulations involve relief: for instance, avalanche zones, flood zones and animal conservation areas. By cross-referencing all this information on Géoportail, a mayor can see what’s left, where he or she is free to act and can allow the commune to develop..
Couldn’t the same thing be done with an up-to-date town plan?
PL : That’s how it was done until now! But it required excellent knowledge of the local surroundings and a whole team of people to get the preliminary work done. We managed without 3D before and of course we could manage without it now. But it’s still a useful extra all the same. We didn’t need mobile phones before either, but that doesn’t stop them from being extremely handy!
A snapshot of the country’s urbanisation
In the July-August 2007 edition of IGN Magazine you said that “Géoportail gives an alarming picture of how our land is becoming increasingly urbanised”. Don’t aerial photos provide enough information? How does Géoportail make us more aware of this phenomenon?
PL :There are now few open spaces and our territory is finite. France’s population density is high, and over the past twenty years we have begun to follow the American model with its myth of an individual house for everyone. To make this kind of habitat possible, urbanisation swallows up around 550 square kilometres a year - by no means insignificant. It means that every 10 years, the equivalent of a French département is covered by small individual homes. At ground level you don’t notice it, you can’t take it in. Géoportail is a land-planning tool that helps us see what’s going on by improving map legibility. It helps us plan better, marking out zones that might become conservation areas.
Next steps...
What are the prospects?
PL :First the IGN inputs all its data, all its maps. Then all the other “layers” of data coming from other ministries and authorities will be added: the local bus-route map for a town or new housing estate, the water-supply network, the Ministry for Ecology’s zoning regulations etc. France has a whole series of different types of zone. One of the advantages of Géoportail is that all these can be piled one on top of the other, enabling people to know more about what’s around them and planners and decision-makers to see which areas are the most valuable from an ecological point of view, and therefore need to be protected. The other advantage is that a type of public service will be set up to make it easier for users to complete various types of administrative and other procedures.
For example?
PL : When you sell a house or flat you have to provide the solicitor with a plan that shows the dwelling is not in a flood zone, even if it is on the 25th floor. At present, you have to approach the Town Hall or a specialist organisation. In the future, this will be an online service provided by Géoportail. It’s a fantastic tool for the public and could well provide real social progress. Publishing administrative regulations on Géoportail raises their profile and makes it easier for people to access them. It’s just a question of making a small effort to learn how the site works.
