Water Resource Management Support
Airborne LiDAR Terrain and Hydrology Development for New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP)
The majority of New York City’s water originates from the Delaware, Catskill, and Croton watersheds
- located up to 125 miles upstate of the city. Connected via three main aqueducts and three city water
tunnels, 19 upstate reservoirs and three controlled lakes have a storage capacity of 580 billion gallons
of water. Over one billion gallons of this water are delivered daily to more than nine million New Yorkers
using little energy aside from gravity.
NYCDEP, through its own Long-Term Watershed Protection Plan, has commitments to produce high-quality terrain
surface models for the watersheds making up the City’s water supply. NYCDEP is responsible for continued
compliance with unfiltered drinking water regulations, and considers modeling an essential tool for meeting EPA
standards. It is in the best interest of NYCDEP (and NYC) to exercise every available option to avoid
construction of water filtration plants, as such, NYCDEP requires assistance from IAGT to develop an up-to-date and
comprehensive hydrology dataset of New York City’s water supply regions.
View the NYCDEP's Long-Term Watershed Protection Plan here.
Utilizing airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) terrain data and aerial orthophotography collected by the
New York State Office of Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructure Coordination (NYS CSCIC), IAGT is currently developing
a stream center line network, hydrographic breakline compilation, terrain and contour models,
enhanced bare earth & general point classification, data integration to an enterprise Geodatabase, and product
maintenance protocols.