The Malta Environment and Planning Authority this week started flying metric aerial photography.

The authority periodically undertakes aerial photography in order to update several key products produced by the Mapping Unit, Malta’s National Mapping Agency. The authority has an archive of detailed photography of the country dating back to 1957. With the help of these photographs, one can trace the evolution of development.

This exercise ties in with the announcement made earlier this year by the Minister for Rural Affairs and the Environment, that aerial photography is going to be used to identify illegal developments and subsequent action will be taken against them. This will be another tool which MEPA will be able to use against illegal development.

The photographs are of great importance to people like students, architects, geographers, planners and all those who need an aerial snapshot of a locality. Such pictures have also been used to identify archaeological remains. Examples of such photographs can be found on MEPA’s web-server.

This year two scales of aerial imagery are being shot.

Photography at 1:10000 scale will be taken to produce a high resolution orthophotomap of the Maltese Islands. Lower flights will be undertaken to shoot imagery at 1:4000 scale which will be used to update the digital topographic map. This will also facilitate enforcement action reconnaissance.