Tracks

A geospatial ETL pipeline that consolidates walking, cycling, and recreational track data from 16+ New Zealand government suppliers (DOC, regional and district councils, Te Araroa, NZTA, and others) into a unified national dataset with standardised attributes.

Maintained by Herenga ā Nuku Aotearoa, the Outdoor Access Commission.

To learn more about how the process works, refer to /METHODOLOGY.md

Prerequisites

• ArcGIS Pro with its bundled arcpy conda environment
• Python package: rapidfuzz (pip install rapidfuzz)

All scripts must be run from within the ArcGIS Pro conda environment.

Running the Pipeline

All scripts run from within scripts/. Stage 1 is a Jupyter notebook; remaining stages are Python scripts.

Stage	Script	Output
1. Download + Clean + Transform	#1-download-clean-transform.ipynb	downloads/, clean/, transform/transform.gdb
2. Merge	python merge_model.py	working/model_round_N.gdb/merge_result
3. Reporting	reporting/call-reporting.ipynb	reporting/reporting.xlsx

Configuration

Three YAML files in scripts/ drive all runtime behaviour:

• tracks.yaml — dataset list (name, src, query) and all GDB paths. Dataset order = merge priority; earlier entries win.
• fields.yaml — domain value codes and per-code priorities for Walk, Bike, Horse, OffRoadVehicle, DogAccess, Status, MobilityAccess. Lower priority number = more conservative = wins when merging.
• model_merge.yaml — logistic regression coefficients/threshold and buffer-growing spatial parameters used by merge_model.py.

Data Sources

Track data is sourced from the following New Zealand agencies:

• Department of Conservation (DOC)
• Wellington City Council
• Masterton District Council
• Auckland Council
• Waikato District Council
• Gisborne District Council
• Thames-Coromandel District Council
• Gore District Council
• Porirua City Council
• Rotorua Lakes Council
• Dunedin City Council
• Marlborough District Council
• Kāpiti Coast District Council
• Far North District Council
• Palmerston North City Council
• Christchurch City Council
• Top of the South Maps
• Queenstown-Lakes District Council
• Environment Canterbury
• Greater Wellington Regional Council
• Environment Southland
• Hawke's Bay Regional Council
• Hauraki Rail Trail
• Find My Adventure
• Te Araroa Trust

NOTE: The above may be out-of-date. You should check tracks.yaml for the most up-to-date list

Adding a New Dataset

1. Add an entry to scripts/tracks.yaml (name, src, query) at the desired merge priority position
2. Create scripts/transform/constants_[name].py with RENAME_COLS dict and domain mapping dicts
3. Create scripts/transform/method_[name].py with a main(sedf: pd.DataFrame) -> pd.DataFrame function
4. Add an elif ds_name == "[name]": branch in scripts/transform/method.py:transform_datasets()

License

MIT — © 2026 Herenga ā Nuku Aotearoa, the Outdoor Access Commission