Historical orthophotos 1940s

This dataset contains historical orthophoto mosaics based on available aerial photographs covering parts of the Belgian territory. Orthophotos are aerial photographs that have been geometrically corrected (orthorectified) to eliminate distortions caused by terrain relief, lens distortion, and camera tilt. Unlike raw aerial imagery, orthophotos have a uniform scale and accurate geometry, making them suitable for cartography, measurements, and visual analysis. This specific dataset includes historical orthophotos from 1947 and 1948, derived from aerial surveys carried out by the National Geographic Institute (NGI). During this period, only analogue aerial photographs are available. The analogue images were scanned at high resolution and orthorectified. The resulting orthophotos were assembled into mosaics and georeferenced in the Lambert 2008 coordinate system. All orthophotos are panchromatic (black and white). The ground resolution (GSD) is 50 cm. The spatial coverage of this dataset is limited to the areas for which aerial photographs were available during the mentioned period. The data can be visualized via the corresponding web services (WMS/WMTS). The orthophotos and the original aerial photographs can be ordered in high resolution via https://shop.ngi.be/nl/luchtfotos/.