This week much effort went into maps of the Wairarapa Line, updating the coverage using 2021 high resolution maps of the urban areas (Featherston, Carterton and Masterton plus some other parts). Partly this is for the Wairarapa level crossings programme community response and partly so that the next update of Volume 6 can make use of improved historical maps of the area using the benefits of more accurate coverage using the 0.075 metre tiles that have been produced and which are very up to date for the areas.

Some work was also done on the Midland Line and the final batch of historical aerial photos requested for the Volume 9 maps was received. There is now some to finish various areas of historical maps and then start production. This is maybe a week or two behind at the moment but should make a fair bit of progress in the coming week. A very small amount was done on Palmerston North, mostly just evaluating where to pick up work when Volume 9 is finished, and one of the project’s computers had a capacity upgrade for better perfomance and more capability when creating the historical mosaics that are used throughout the

Webmaps have been getting another look over this week. It would not be the biggest surprise to anyone to understand that we are not best pleased with the current system of rendering the webmaps on the live site. Currently work is going into evaluating options for improving the display of the webmaps by a lot. This looks fairly promising and would also make it easier to synchronise updates from local map production to the server as they are produced. A fresh update of current webmaps is being built at present and it is hoped to have a test site online in about three weeks for further testing before deciding whether to commit to the new system. However the current site will not be updated at present and as soon as a decision is reached on deploying a new solution, the site will switch over as soon as the new system is ready. So it is early days yet and there is a lot of work to come alongside the other projects currently being produced. What is also important to note is that the preference will be to keep the webmaps without historical aerial photo coverage that had been proposed for inclusion in the current version and which would have been easy to add. In all probability, this coverage will then only be available in the static offline maps formats that are currently produced in the project.