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Useful video: finding council GIS maps, data and BayMaps

· 5 min read
Duane Wilkins

A useful 2026 Ngā Poutama Matawhenua recording looks at how to find and use council GIS information: Accessing Council GIS Maps, Data and Resources: Bay of Plenty Regional Council BayMaps, a Case Study.

Watch the recording on YouTube

There is also a companion StoryMap on accessing council GIS maps and data, published in March 2026.

Council GIS can be extremely useful because iwi, hapū, marae, Māori trusts and whānau regularly have to work with planning, hazards, infrastructure, environmental monitoring and regulatory systems. The important caution is that a council viewer represents the world through council functions and datasets. It can tell you a great deal about planning zones, infrastructure or monitored environments, but it does not become the authority on whenua, whakapapa, local history or cultural relationships simply because the layer is official.

Why it is useful​

Councils hold a large amount of spatial information that may be relevant to iwi, hapū, Māori trusts and environmental projects. The difficulty is often knowing where to find it and understanding whether a map viewer is showing a downloadable dataset, a web service or only a visual layer.

The Bay of Plenty example is useful beyond that region because the same search approach works elsewhere in Aotearoa. Council GIS can provide context for district and regional plans, hazards and natural-environment layers, property and rating information, infrastructure and transport, freshwater and coastal monitoring, historic imagery, consent and planning overlays, and open-data services that can be connected directly to QGIS or ArcGIS.

The strongest use begins with the kaupapa rather than the viewer. Decide what question the iwi, hapū, marae, trust or project is trying to answer first. Then use council information where it helps. Starting with every layer that happens to be available can easily turn the council's administrative view of the world into the structure of the whole project.

Use the viewer as a starting point​

A public council viewer is useful for discovering information, but it is not always the best source for analysis. Once you find a relevant layer, identify the organisation that maintains it, look for an open-data portal or service endpoint, read the metadata and currency information, connect to or download the maintained source where possible, and record the source and date in your own project.

The 2026 council GIS StoryMap includes examples of council and national sources that can be followed directly.

Official does not mean complete​

Council datasets are normally authoritative for particular council functions. A planning-zone layer can be authoritative for the current plan. A council asset layer can be useful for understanding infrastructure. A flood model may be essential for a particular planning decision. That does not make those layers complete descriptions of the place.

This matters especially when council systems contain layers labelled with Māori concepts, iwi areas or mana whenua relationships. Such layers may have been created for a specific administrative purpose and may not capture the fuller relationships or authority understood locally. Where that distinction matters, go back to the people and organisations whose relationships are being represented rather than treating the council layer as the final answer.

Māori GIS can hold both views at once. The council layer can show what the regulatory system currently recognises, while locally maintained information can represent the kaupapa and relationships that the project itself needs. Keeping those layers distinct is often more useful than trying to force one to replace the other.

From data access to rangatiratanga​

Open council data is valuable because it reduces dependence on having a personal contact inside the organisation. People can inspect planning, environmental and hazard information for themselves and connect the data directly into their own GIS. That can strengthen practical rangatiratanga because the community is better able to interrogate the same information being used in decisions that affect them.

Access alone is not the whole capability. People still need to understand the limitations, dates and purpose of the layers, and they need the ability to combine those sources with their own information without surrendering control of that local information back to the council platform.

A useful pattern is therefore to treat council services as external reference layers while keeping locally controlled data in an environment chosen by the iwi, hapū or project. That allows the state and local-government view to be seen without making it the system of record for everything else.

The broader Matawhenua StoryMaps collection contains practical examples on imagery, freshwater, whenua, 3D storytelling and GIS data sources.

For a consolidated list of current sources, see NZ data sources and Ngā Poutama Matawhenua videos and StoryMaps.

The practical principle is simple: use council GIS confidently for the questions it is designed to answer, keep its institutional perspective visible, and let the kaupapa and the people connected to the whenua determine what the wider map needs to mean.