15/12/25 Update: New 3D Building Data for England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

We’re excited to announce that Cityweft now supports a new nationwide dataset of precise building heights across England derived from high-precision LiDAR data collected by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) between 2022 and 2025. This means richer, more accurate 3D context models for all of England — now available across the Cityweft platform, plugins, and APIs.

What’s new

• Nationwide building height coverage: Leveraging recent LiDAR surveys compiled under DEFRA’s National LIDAR Programme, we now integrate precise building height information into Cityweft models for locations across all of England. data.gov.uk

• High-precision elevation data: The LiDAR data — collected between 2022–2025 — delivers highly accurate elevation measurements that capture the true height of buildings and terrain. This dramatically improves the realism and reliability of 3D city models. data.gov.uk

• Seamless integration: Whether you’re exporting models via the web platform, using the Rhino/other plugins, or accessing data through our API, the new England building height layer is fully supported and ready for use.

  
  

  

Why this matters

Accurate building heights unlock stronger analysis and better design outcomes:

• 🏙️ Context-aware design: More realistic city massing for planning and architectural concept work.

• ☀️ Better environmental analysis: Improved shadow, solar access, and visibility studies.

• 📊 Precise urban metrics: Enhanced building volume and form for data-driven workflows.

• ⚡ Consistent 3D outputs: Reliable geometry and height data for CAD, BIM, and GIS applications.

Examples of improvement

With this dataset now baked into Cityweft exports, you’ll notice:

• More faithful representation of urban skylines.

• Building heights that reflect real-world survey data rather than inferred estimates.

• Better performance when modelling site conditions, building context, and simulations.

  
  

What’s next?

This England release is part of a broader push to expand Cityweft’s high-precision global coverage using authoritative data sources.

Coming up next:

• 🇯🇵 Japan – Dense, data-rich urban environments with precise height information to support complex metropolitan modelling and analysis.

• 🇪🇸 Spain – New high-resolution building and terrain datasets for major cities and regions, enabling more accurate urban context for Southern Europe.

• 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 Scotland – Extended UK coverage with detailed terrain and building height data to support cross-border projects and national-scale studies.

  
  

As always, these updates will be rolled out directly into the Cityweft platform, plugins, and API — no extra setup required.

If there’s a country or city you’d like us to prioritise, feel free to reach out.