Height – the 3 in 3D – can be the difference maker for siting new projects, particularly in rural or remote areas. 

While a 2D image can provide the width and length of an area of interest, you need that third dimension, height, to determine whether an area is accessible and appropriate for development.

For this illustration we’ve used a publicly available Google Earth 3D snapshot as our baseline and gathered open-sourced imagery and height data for Alma, New Brunswick. This is to demonstrate what is possible with Terris. Consider the difference between these otherwise identical images of Alma, a small rural village on the Bay of Fundy coast.

The tree line: Note in the public image, the river bottom appears to gently merge with the tree line, which sits along a gently rolling slope. This isn’t the reality of life along the Bay of Fundy. Rather, as you can see from the Terris 3D image, the river bed cuts a deep groove alongside a steep, heavily-treed land mass. It’s a drastic elevation change and not likely conducive to easily accessing or building on it. However, it also suggests that the top of the hill is higher than the public image illustrates, offering a commanding view of the area below.

The human presence: The village of Alma dates back over 150 years but because the settlement is in rural Canada, images of it aren’t regularly captured as they are for major metropolitan areas. Simply put, the sparser populated an area is the less likely large publicly-available imagery providers will have accurate visualizations. That’s why the first photo presents the east side of the river as a rolling tree-lined hill, similar in grade and elevation of the west riverbank. However, when viewed via Terris, it is revealed that homes, businesses and roads populate the hill, which is both steeper and more heavily treed than the first image would suggest.

The infrastructure: In real life, the eastern entrance to Fundy National Park is a busy, bustling place in the summer and it has the infrastructure to prove it. However, the first image below depicts the park’s eastern entrance as an empty asphalt lot that sits along the river bed. Terris has included in its depiction the treed landscaping, likely street lamps (the brown cones) and a building (the Molly Kool Heritage Centre about the world’s first female sea captain). The parking lot is also slightly elevated from the river bed.

Taken together, the full 3D image is of multiple steep elevations, a variety of human activity, and heavily treed terrain along the Bay of Fundy coast.

That’s the big picture Terris can provide for an area of interest to help guide decision-making for any place on earth.