Wednesday, 17 July 2013 

MapData Services is a company that has been appointed to capture images along public roads controlled by the City of Melbourne for internal use only.  It uses one vehicle to capture the imagery.  Earthmine imagery refers to a proprietary system to capture ground level images with greater accuracy.  This is the first time that Earthmine imagery capture has been undertaken for the City of Melbourne.  In this instance residents were not notified as the project is intended to capture City of Melbourne assets and property frontages visible from public roads only.

This technology provides a tool for City of Melbourne staff to view scenes along Council controlled roadways.  The technology enables council to locate and measure assets and surfaces such as street furniture, parking signs, poles and trees that are located within the road reserve, as well as external building facades that front onto the road.  There is no intention to capture, use or display any image data which cannot normally be seen from the street and faces and vehicle number plates are automatically blurred out during the processing phase.

The area covered by this project includes public roads within the City of Melbourne municipal area. The contract was awarded to MapData Services on 17 June 2013 and the image capture component of the project is expected be completed within a fortnight. The cost of the project is $93,860 ex GST. This is for ongoing asset maintenance and not specifically related to a major project.

Community privacy is protected as the images are not being made available to the public and are only being for used for Council purposes.

City of Melbourne website http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx