Data licence

Licence and attribution

Where the relief comes from, what the licence allows, and the exact credit to reproduce if you reuse the data.

Last updated: July 28, 2026

This page summarizes the licence for convenience; the authoritative text is the Creative Commons one (linked below).

01Open data, under the CC-BY 4.0 licence

In brief · The relief comes from Données Québec, under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0: free to use — including commercially — with attribution.

The relief shown by Québec 3D comes from the Québec LiDAR data, produced and released by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests (MRNF) on Données Québec under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) licence. This licence lets anyone view, redistribute, remix and adapt the data, including for commercial purposes, provided the source is credited.

02The credit to reproduce

In brief · If you reuse the data or a derived product, reproduce this credit — creator, source, licence, and that it was modified.

Any distribution of the data — or of a product derived from it (topographic profile, render, 3D mesh, private instance) — must carry the following credit, adapted to the medium (footer, caption, metadata, companion file):

Contains data from the Government of Québec (Ministère des Ressources naturelles et des Forêts, MRNF) — Québec LiDAR data, distributed on Données Québec under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0) licence. Data modified (Terrain-RGB encoding, tiling, 3D visualization) by Québec 3D.

The licence lets you satisfy these conditions “in any reasonable manner”: when the medium is too small, a simple link to this page is enough (article 3(a)(2) of the licence).

03What the licence covers — and what it does not

In brief · The data is under CC-BY. The code, interface, processing and analyses of Québec 3D remain our property.

CC-BY is not a “share-alike” (copyleft) licence: it covers the data and its direct representations. By contrast, the code, interface, geospatial processing, analyses and editorial texts of Québec 3D belong to their authors and may be offered under other terms, including paid ones. Reusing the open data grants no rights over these elements.

04No official endorsement

In brief · Crediting the source does not allow implying any approval by the Government of Québec.

The licence reserves trademark and publicity rights (article 2(b)). Crediting the source does not allow implying that the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests (MRNF) or the Government of Québec endorses, approves or is a partner of Québec 3D or any derived product.

05Modified data

In brief · Québec 3D transforms the data for display, without recomputing elevations; we indicate this, as the licence requires.

In accordance with CC-BY, we indicate that the original data has been modified for display: Terrain-RGB encoding, tiling, 3D visualization. Elevation values are not recomputed; the relief shown remains the MRNF's.

06References

In brief · The dataset, the full licence text, and our terms of service.

Dataset: Québec LiDAR data — Données Québec
Licence text: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0)
Our Terms of Service