Improving sustainable planning with high quality AI-developed maps

To meet the sustainable development goals and enable societal transformation, there is a strong need to plan and align human land-use with the needs of the environment, taking climate change effects into account. The number one tool to succeed in sustainable spatial planning is accurate and detailed maps.

However, despite all advancements in digitalisation and satellite data, we are today still using maps developed by manual interpretation of areal photos more than 50-years ago – maps with a low level of detail that fails to show key landscape features hidden below the tree canopy.

To provide maps with sufficient detail to allow sustainable land use management and climate adaptation, we will utilise recent technical leaps in laser scanning of the landscape to yield a high resolution digital elevation model, and combine this with artificial intelligence and national field datasets to generate new high-resolution maps covering the entire country.

Meeting the needs for accurate information on small-scale hydrology and soil conditions, expressed by key agencies and practitioners, these maps will provide details of the surface geology, soil depth, ditches, streams and wetlands across all of Sweden.

In a continuous interactive process, researchers from SLU will in this project work together with end-users to create maps enabling efficient and effective spatial planning of built environments and infrastructure, as well as restoration, water protection and climate adaptation.