Norway in Pictures: Creating a National Treasure

Government officials in Norway turned to geographic information system (GIS) software to process, manage, and share its vast archive of aerial imagery. GIS enables officials to respond faster to a crisis in a more precise way and at a larger scale because leaders have a better understanding of landscapes and they can track potential issues faster. This digitization process was a massive undertaking. More than 4,000 projects were accessed, with work happening across 12 agencies. This required the Norwegian Mapping Authority (NMA)—known in Norway as Kartverket––to collaborate with partners to organize and provide easy access to its vast archive of aerial imagery. This national imagery resource dates back to 1935.

To get started, the Norwegian Mapping Authority collaborated with Esri partner Geodata AS in Norway. They provide experts in analyzing, presenting, and visualizing data in digital maps. As GIS experts, Geodata AS is the official Norwegian distributor of Esri technology, with most of their solutions built with ArcGIS software. Geodata AS and NMA created a portal called Norge i bilder, or “Norway in Pictures,” to manage, store, and share the aerial imagery.

“With Norge i bilder, Geodata AS plays a significant part in managing a cultural treasure—a visual record of what our country looks like today, and how it looked in the past,” explained Toni Mikkola, account manager at Geodata AS. “The project has challenged us in the best possible way, and thanks to strong collaboration with [the] Norwegian Public Roads Administration, the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO), and the Norwegian Mapping Authority, Norge i bilder today stands as a solid, well-run, and valuable digital cultural asset.”

The Norwegian Mapping Authority faced significant challenges with the steadily growing amount of aerial image data due to the lack of uniformity, the volume of the files, and difficulty sharing information between offices. They also sought to make this national asset available to anyone in Norway, including the public, and reduce duplicated efforts to collect imagery across the nation. The mapping authority wanted to preserve a sense of history in how it develops infrastructure.
 

Large-scale infrastructure work demands smooth collaboration. “The main thing that we do is develop solutions together with the users,” said Knut Bjørgaas, director of the land mapping division at the Norwegian Mapping Authority. “If we don’t know the users’ needs, we can’t cater for future increased usage and data volumes,” he added.

On the front end, the imagery needed to be readily accessed and shared by all users. Geodata AS developed Norge i bilder as an advanced custom web client, built with ArcGIS Maps SDK for JavaScript. It’s hosted on Kubernetes, an open-source system that automates the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. The imagery, close to 700 terabytes, is visualized by a dynamic image service powered by a mosaic dataset, serving 2.4 million images to a single REST end point. Additionally, the images can be viewed in 2D or 3D.

“Scalability is crucial for maintaining a fast and reliable user experience, especially given the significant increase in data usage,” said Trond Ola Ulvolden, senior engineer at the Norwegian Mapping Authority. 
 

There are two main sources of data for Norge i bilder. The first one is a cooperative effort between the public and private sector, where the Norwegian Mapping Authority conducts aerial mapping in select areas of interest. They also accommodate requests from the public to capture aerial photography of specific locations. Every five to eight years, the mapping authority conducts a comprehensive imagery campaign of the whole country.

Other agencies can submit imagery to the portal too. It was designed to connect with other digital platforms, using Web Map Service (WMS), and Web Map Tile Service (WMTS) to securely handle various file types with automated data.

Since the solution became available, Norge i bilder has been used with advanced data analysis and artificial intelligence to uncover the extent of encroachment by landslides in Norway. After a landslide, the old and new orthophotography of the same terrain was examined to discover the cause of the landslide. "Based on that aerial imagery, we were able to produce the Map for Area Usage, so that we can track over time the changes in each municipality," said Bjorgaas. "There is a high degree of focus now on how we use our areas and how much nature is changing."

Using Norge i bilder, users can see images in 3D, search for places, zoom in and out, export data, get information about the year an image was updated, and see changes over time. Norge i bilder now has 2,000 registered users, and since its launch in 2016, the number of data exports has grown steadily to a total of 70,000.
 

“The usage of our data has more than a tenfold increase during the last 10–12 years. What is important for us going forward is the openness of the solutions where we manage and distribute the geodata, so that users can easily connect, find what they are looking for and extract the information they need,” said Bjørgaas.

Additionally, nonregistered users can access Norge i bilder without logging in. The Norwegian Mapping Authority sees that as a public service to the community.

With the success of Norge i bilder, the future of the portal depends on continued collaboration. “It requires strong, and ideally governmental, oversight, as it involves both the collection and structuring of orthophotos,” said Mikkola. “This is a type of project that other countries could undertake.”