About LandsD Map API

Introduction

The Survey and Mapping Office (SMO) of the Lands Department (LandsD) is the official mapping agency of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. It produces a variety of maps for use in administration, planning development, education, leisure, etc. for the government, private sector and the general public. The i-series digital maps maintained by SMO have been widely used by the mapping community to prepare the base map, build the address tables and link with the geo-reference database (iG1000) for developing the map applications. The Map Application Programming Interface of LandsD (or LandsD Map API) is the new mapping service offered by SMO that would enable Government Departments to access the LandsD's digital map via API protocol.

LandsD Map API promotes wider use of internal Government resources including:

  1. To reduce time and efforts required by the Government Departments to acquire the digital maps from LandsD in preparing and processing raw map data for creating and updating the map base used in the mapping and GIS applications;

  2. To save overall resources to repeat the works on map presentation and base map database maintained by the individual Government Departments since these works are all standardised and centrally provided by LandsD using the Map API; and

  3. To promote the use of digital maps offered by LandsD and enable Government Departments to develop more intra-departmental services which would help their operations and ultimately benefit the mapping community of Hong Kong.

Provided Services

LandsD Map API provides a rich set of geospatial and mapping functionality, enabling developers of the Government Departments to communicate with LandsD Map API services and their integration to their own map applications. LandsD Map API services include the followings:

  1. Topographic map – a tiled based topographic map compiled from the LandsD's digital maps ranging from iB1000 to iB20000 digital map data (https://www.landsd.gov.hk/en/survey-mapping/mapping/multi-scale-topographic-mapping/digital-map.html).

  2. Imagery map – a tiled based imagery map compiled from the LandsD's Satellite Image Maps (https://www.landsd.gov.hk/en/survey-mapping/mapping/thematic-mapping.html#8) and the DOP5000 maps (https://www.landsd.gov.hk/en/survey-mapping/mapping/multi-scale-topographic-mapping/digital-map.html)

  3. iB1000 and iC1000 maps – the map services compliant with the open standards (i.e. OGC WMS and OGC WFS) for providing a wealth of detailed information such as building CSUID for service integration.

  4. Geocoding and place search – the geocoding services find addresses and places of Hong Kong using the information from iB1000, iBG1000, iSG1000 and GeoCommunity Database maintained by LandsD (https://www.landsd.gov.hk/en/survey-mapping/mapping/multi-scale-topographic-mapping/digital-map.html).

Service Availability

The goal of LandsD’s Map API service is to provide a high level of service availability. However, it is possible that an occasion it may be unavailable for very short time periods to permit maintenance or other development activity to take place.

Enquiry

For more information about the LandsD Map API, please visit the APIs Reference page. If any Government Department is interested in using LandsD Map API, please contact mapapi@landsd.gov.hk to obtain the trial API key.