What is the High-Resolution Imagery?

At the beginning of 2015, a coalition of state, regional, and local government agencies purchased a license to Google’s state-wide, high-resolution (6-inch pixels) aerial photography as part of the state’s on-going efforts to provide affordable high-resolution imagery. Google regularly updated the urban areas over the next few years, but some rural areas of the state were left with years-old imagery.

Google announced in 2019 that they would no longer be offering their program, so we started searching for other vendors. After evaluating all our options and financial resources, we selected Hexagon Geospatial and their high-resolution imagery. The first delivery includes state-wide 30cm (~12-inch) coverage flown in 2018 (a higher resolution version of the 2018 NAIP) and 15cm (~6-inch) coverage of the Wasatch Front, Logan, and St. George flown in November 2019. The next delivery in 2021 will provide 15cm coverage of the entire state.

We will continue to provide the previously acquired imagery from the Google contract via the various Google services on Discover.

The License

The licenses governing both the Google and Hexagon imagery are similar, and we will group them together for this discussion. They allow Utah’s cities, counties, special districts, state agencies, school districts, colleges/universities, and tribes to use the imagery in web and desktop mapping applications either from our streaming web service or from locally-stored files. Contractors and formal partners of the immediate licensees are also allowed to use the imagery.

The imagery is hosted on the Google Cloud Platform and delivered as WMS and WMTS Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) services via UGRC’s Discover basemap and imagery server. You can download the original .jp2 imagery tiles from the Discover index page or get a copy from UGRC, which keeps a master set of the imagery files.

Who Qualifies?

  • Utah state agencies
  • Cities, counties, and other political subdivisions of the state of Utah
  • Special districts (water, fire, etc) in the state of Utah
  • Utah K-12 schools and institutions of higher education, including students working on school projects
  • Tribal entities
  • Contractors and formal partners of an immediate licensee
  • Utah National Guard

Who Doesn’t Automatically Qualify?

  • Federal agencies
  • US Military
  • Cities, counties, or state agencies outside of the state of Utah
  • Out-of-state schools
  • Non-profit entities
  • Professional groups and organizations
  • Community groups
  • Private individuals
  • Consultants and contractors

Note: Federal agencies, US military entities, consultants, contractors, or other formal partners can qualify if they are directly performing work on behalf of a qualified licensee, but only for the specific project in the contract.

If you don’t qualify for the licensed imagery, you can sign up for Discover’s general access services, which include NAIP imagery and the slightly older HRO imagery.

Sign Up Information

If you qualify to use the licensed imagery under the terms listed above, visit the main Discover page for sign up information and a link to the Organizational Usage Agreement.

Check out valuable information and FAQs about using Discover services.

Comments, questions, compliments, or concerns can be directed to Jake Adams from UGRC at jdadams@utah.gov

Harvesting the corn maze at the American West Heritage Center, Wellsville