The Bay of Plenty has recently leaped into higher definition on Google Earth thanks to a little known committee called the joint GIS committee.

Pictures of the Bay of Plenty on Google Earth can now be zoomed in to show individual properties to a degree of resolution that was unavailable until recently.
'It went up about a month ago,” says GIS programmer/analyst Brett Steele at the Western BOP district council.
'I only stumbled across it a couple of weeks ago. I knew it was coming, I didn't know when.
'Google Earth sent us a hard drive and we loaded all the data and sent the hard drive off to them.”
Overlaying the aerial photography raises the resolution from 0.6 on the satellite photography to 0.1.
The joint GIS committee represents councils from the Bay of Plenty including Tauranga, Western Bay, Rotorua, Eastern Bay and Whakatane, in bidding for common services like aerial photography.
It saved the councils at least half a million dollars last year on aerial photography, says Western BOP GIS programmer/analyst Brett Steele.
The districts' aerial photographs are updated every five years and the councils have been working together on that project for the last two flying seasons.
If they made businesses pay for the information they would simply pass that cost onto the ratepayers who had already paid for it.
'So we decided to make it available to Google Earth,” says Brett.
Gareth Evans at Environment BOP organised it. Gareth has since left EBOP to do volunteer service abroad for a year.