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Orthophoto of the Czech Republic - introduction

Orthophoto of the Czech Republic (Orthophoto CR) represents a periodically updated set of colour orthophotos of the dimensions and layout of the State map at 1 : 5,000 (2x2,5 km). Orthophoto is a geo-referenced orthophotographic imagery of the Earth surface. Orthophotos show the photographic image of the Earth surface transformed in the way that image shifts generated during acquisition of aerial images are removed. Orthophotos are colour-balanced, apparently seamless (seams are confined to natural lines). In frame of individual zones the orthophotos show images of the area acquired in the same year. Up to 2008 the Orthophoto CR was created with the pixel size 0.5m and since 2009 orthophotos already have a unified pixel size of 0.25m. From 2016 to 2020 orthophotos had a unified pixel size 0.20m. Since 2021, the pixel size is 0.125m. Since 2010 the aerial survey has been carried out by digital cameras, which has caused additional increase of product quality.

Production of the state Orthophoto CR has been assured by the Land Survey Office in cooperation with the Military Geographic and Hydrometeorological Office (VGHMÚř) on the basis of the agreement between the Czech Office for Mapping, Surveying and Cadastre (CUZK) and the Ministry of Defence of the CR (MO) since 2003. Colour aerial photographs of one third of the Czech territory was taken along meridian zones (“West”, “Centre” and “East”) every year between 2003 and 2011. Since 2012 the aerial survey of the territory of the Czech Republic has been changed to biennial period when about 1/2 of the territory of the Czech Republic is taken every year. In the years 2012 to 2019, the territory of the Czech Republic was divided into two zones ("West" and "East") according to SM50 layout. Since 2020, the division of the territory of the Czech Republic has taken into account the borders of the regions.

Orthophoto CR is used by the Ministry of Agriculture domain as a basis for evaluation of the fundamental production units of the LPIS system. In the domain of CUZK and MO it serves, among others, as a fundamental base for the update of topographic data and further state map series. Orthophoto CR is also provided to an array of other users and is intended above all for use by organisations and state institutions and local governments for planning and project preparation, environmental protection, risk management and other applications.

Increasingly, Orthophoto CR finds its use as the base data layer in geographic information systems, map portals and web applications. Orthophoto CR is beneficial to combine with vector data, e.g. other data sets from the production of CUZK domain. Orthophoto CR serves as a background layer for all services enabling access to real estates cadastre data (Viewing the REC, DP, WS DP, WMS REC).

Orthophoto CR file datasets are provided in selected formats by ATOM download services as open data from 01/07/2023, free of charge under the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license.
 
Another option for data distribution is the export of data slices in the Geoviewer application.
 
You can use the eshop application to order data in other formats and other forms of distribution.

Last update: 26.06.2023
Last revision:
Author: 910