Ever wondered what you’re house looks like from a bird’s eye view?

Huntsville residents can now find out thanks to the town’s online interactive map that now includes detailed aerial images of the municipality.

Huntsville Geographic Information Systems (GIS) co-ordinator Margaret Stead told the Forester the new feature is being launched today in honour of International GIS Day, which aims to showcase the real-world applications of GIS technology through information and education, according to the International GIS Day website.

For the last couple years, Huntsville has had an interactive mapping system on its website, www.huntsville.ca, but Stead says she doesn’t believe most residents know about it.

“I get a sense that mainly real estate agents, consultants or planning consultants and engineering firms use it,” she said.

Now, Stead says an image layer has been added to the system, so residents can use a roll number of civic address to search for a property, and see a clear aerial image of anywhere in Huntsville.

“It’s like a version of (the program) Google Earth for Huntsville,” said Stead. “But (with Google Earth) when you zoom in you lose the clarity. This is very high quality imagery that we’ve obtained (and) this is our way of displaying it to the public via the internet.”

The images were taken through the Simcoe Muskoka air photo project, said Stead, which was a collaboration between the Ministry of Natural Resources, the District Municipality of Muskoka and the County of Simcoe to obtain aerial images of the region.

The photos were captured this spring and the images were delivered to the Town of Huntsville the beginning of October, said Stead.

She added that over the next year the town will be reformatting the interactive map website in order to add new, more user-friendly software to the system.

To access the interactive map system, log on to www.huntsville.ca, enter into the main site and select, ‘maps’ from the left-hand navigation list.