I received a notice from Jouko Vanne that the National Land Survey of Finland had opened all of its topographic data to be used free of charge. He noted that, “In the beginning, the freely available data will particularly benefit application developers, map enthusiasts and organisations using geographic information.”
It appears that the actual LIDAR point cloud data is available for certain regions of the country. This was used to produce a 2m DEM.
I found this to be a very impressive example of what “can be” in terms of the work of a national survey agency and of the management of geospatial data. One can only dream of what we could do with the right leadership and support.
