France drone map as GIS data: using the Géoportail layer

Looking at France's drone zone map on Géoportail is enough for a one-off flight. For a consultancy planning twenty missions a month, a surveyor pricing a 15 km corridor or a local authority's GIS team, the same information becomes data: a feed to plug into QGIS, to intersect with a site boundary and the terrain, then to archive. Here is how these feeds actually work, what their attributes contain, and the pitfalls we found when querying them on 30 September 2026.

Published on 1 October 2026, reviewed on 22 September 2026 — regulations in force as of September 2026.

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From the on-screen map to data in your GIS

Our guide on reading the Géoportail drone zone map explains the colour code, what CTRs and P, R and D zones are, and the reasoning to apply to a given address. This guide starts at the next step: taking that information out of the browser and handling it like any other geographic layer in a project. For a professional the benefit is concrete. A click on the map tells you about one point; a vector layer in a GIS tells you about a whole site boundary, a network corridor or a portfolio of sites, and lets you produce a reproducible document for the mission file.

Two public sources coexist, and it helps to know which one you are handling. The first is the IGN layer (France's national mapping agency), "Restrictions UAS catégorie Ouverte et aéromodélisme", the one displayed on Géoportail and cartes.gouv.fr. It is served by the Géoplateforme (data.geopf.fr) under the technical name TRANSPORTS.DRONES.RESTRICTIONS, as tiled images (WMTS), on-demand images (WMS) and vectors (WFS, feature type TRANSPORTS.DRONES.RESTRICTIONS:carte_restriction_drones_lf). The second is the "UAS geographical zones" dataset from the SIA, the French civil aviation authority's aeronautical information service, published free of charge in the "digital products freely available" section of its website, under Article 15 of Regulation (EU) 2019/947, which requires States to publish these zones in a common digital format.

The two sources do not say quite the same thing and are not handled the same way: the IGN layer is a cartographic rendering designed for the open category, with polygons ready to display; the SIA dataset is structured aeronautical data following the EUROCAE ED-269 model, richer but more demanding to interpret. A serious consultancy uses the former to visualise and the latter to verify.

Connecting the feeds in QGIS: what the attributes really contain

In QGIS, the IGN layer is added like any OGC service: a WMTS connection to https://data.geopf.fr/wmts for the coloured backdrop, and a WFS connection to https://data.geopf.fr/wfs/ows for the polygons. On 30 September 2026, both feeds responded without an access key. The WFS is best restricted to the project extent (bounding-box filter): the national layer holds 89,737 polygons, far too many to load in full for a site of a few hectares. The Lambert-93 projection (EPSG:2154) is offered by the service, which avoids on-the-fly reprojection for projects in mainland France.

The attributes are minimal, and that is the first lesson. Each polygon carries only two fields. The "limite" field contains a label, not a number: "Vol interdit" (flight prohibited) or "Hauteur maximale de vol de 30 m" (maximum flight height 30 m), or 50, 60 or 100 m. To filter or style the layer, you therefore have to extract the numeric value with an expression, treating "Vol interdit" as a zero height. The "remarque" field carries the context: the statement that flying over public space in built-up areas is prohibited except as allowed by the airspace order, the "mandatory prior notification for aircraft above 900 g" in military training sectors, or "aerodrome reference altitude: 88 m". In a sample of 24,737 polygons we queried, eight in ten carry the "flight prohibited" limit and six in ten the remark about public space in built-up areas: a large share of the layer therefore describes the outlines of built-up areas, which IGN's own metadata describe as "indicative".

The SIA dataset is downloaded as a ZIP archive containing a JSON file named UASZones_YYYY-MM-DD_…json, the first date being the effective date. It does not open directly as a layer: each zone contains volumes described by a horizontal geometry and vertical limits, which must be converted (a script of a few dozen lines, or a tool able to read ED-269). In exchange, each zone states its aeronautical name (for example [LF][P 63] ILE DU LEVANT), the authority to contact, the type of restriction (prohibited, conditional, authorisation required) and the associated regulatory message. This is the source that tells you, when pricing a job, which body a clearance request must be sent to.

Overlaying the site boundary and the terrain: the reference-altitude trap

The most profitable use of the data is intersection: load the project boundary (land parcels, network route, plant perimeter), clip it with the restriction polygons, and within seconds you get the share of the site under "flight prohibited", the share capped at 30 or 50 m and the share open up to 120 m. For a linear corridor, the same process produces a list of sections with their constraint, directly usable to split the mission into flights and identify the clearance requests to file. Attached to the quote, this table avoids the unpleasant surprise of a client discovering the day before the flight that a third of the site sits under a prohibited zone.

The trap lies around aerodromes. The SIA user guide states that for these zones the ceiling is expressed relative to sea level when the facility's reference altitude is known, and that otherwise the height "is to be considered relative to the reference altitude of the facility concerned". The IGN layer carries that altitude in its "remarque" field. In practice, a 50 m ceiling around an aerodrome whose reference altitude is 88 m amounts to an absolute ceiling of about 138 m. On a site lying lower, at 70 m, the real margin above the ground is larger; on a hill at 120 m, it drops to about twenty metres. Intersecting the layer with a digital terrain model, such as IGN's RGE ALTI, turns a theoretical ceiling into the height actually available above each point of the site, something no click on the map will give you.

Two precautions complete the exercise. P, R and D zones whose lateral limits are not published in the AIP are represented in the SIA dataset by a 3,700 m radius cylinder around the published point: this is a rendering convention, not a regulatory boundary, and a site that brushes that circle deserves a check in the AIP. And flight levels published in aeronautical units are converted into metres with a safety margin, which may shift the limits slightly compared with the original text.

What the data does not contain, and why it ages in 28 days

The SIA dataset is updated on the AIRAC calendar: each edition is the reference for 28 days, and two datasets coexist ahead of a change, the current one and the upcoming one. A layer downloaded and saved in a QGIS project may therefore be wrong by the next cycle. The working rule follows naturally: reload the data for every mission, and keep in the file the dated extract used for planning. On 30 September 2026 we also noticed a mismatch between the IGN feeds: the WMTS shows a "June 2026 edition", while the vector WFS declares itself "up to date as of 07-2025". Both summaries still cite a 2017 order, whereas the applicable text is the order of 3 December 2020 on the use of airspace by unmanned aircraft. For an area calculation, it is therefore wiser to check the vectors against the recent image, or to start from the SIA dataset.

Above all, none of this data says whether a zone is active. The SIA guide says so explicitly: activation times published in the AIP are not included, only a "permanent yes or no" flag is. Temporary restrictions published by NOTAM or AIP supplement do not appear either, nor does the activation of the military very-low-level network, which must be checked on the day on the AZBA map (see our guide on the RTBA and the AZBA check). Zones where aerial data capture is prohibited (ZICAD) are in a separate layer, and prefectoral or municipal orders are only partly represented. Finally, the IGN layer only describes the open category: it says nothing about what a standard scenario or a specific-category authorisation makes possible.

Legally, neither the map nor the file is authoritative. IGN states that the rendering "does not engage the producers' liability", and the SIA that its data is intended for geo-awareness and "cannot be used on its own for activities directly affecting flight safety". The reference remains the order of 3 December 2020 and the aeronautical publications. This position is not peculiar to France: the comparative review by Stöcker, Bennett, Nex, Gerke and Zevenbergen, published in 2017 in Remote Sensing, shows that in most countries regulation has become a planning parameter for aerial acquisition campaigns in its own right, to be handled upstream like weather or target resolution, not as a last-minute check (see the study).

Working method and 2026 prices for an airspace study

The method we recommend has five steps. One: download the SIA dataset for the AIRAC cycle in force on the flight date, and note its file name. Two: load the project boundary and the IGN feed restricted to that extent, then intersect. Three: for each zone touched, look up in the SIA dataset the competent authority and the type of restriction and, near an aerodrome, recompute the available height with the terrain model. Four: on D-1 and on the day, check NOTAMs, AIP supplements and AZBA, which no layer replaces. Five: archive the extract, the map produced and screenshots of the day's checks in the mission file. For surveying and mapping work, our surveying and mapping edition of the regulatory guide also details the data-capture formalities, ZICAD included, that come on top of this airspace study.

Price ranges observed in France in 2026, excl. VAT:

Service	Observed price (excl. VAT)
Airspace check for a single site (part of preparation)	included in the mission package
Mapping study of a large or multi-site footprint (GIS, constraint table, authorities to contact)	€150 to €400
Analysis of a linear corridor several kilometres long, split into sections and flights	€300 to €800

For the client, the useful question is not "does your drone have a map?" but "can you show me, on my site, what share is constrained, by which zone, and whom you will ask for clearance?". A contractor who answers with a dated table rather than an app screenshot has usually already done the work. For a mission over a large footprint, a corridor or a portfolio of sites, request a quote and attach the boundary file (shapefile, GeoPackage or KML): the airspace study can be carried out well before the flight date.

Frequently asked questions

Do you need an access key to load the IGN drone layer into QGIS?

On 30 September 2026, the Géoplateforme WMTS and WFS feeds (data.geopf.fr) responded without a key for the TRANSPORTS.DRONES.RESTRICTIONS layer. Access conditions may change: if you get an error, check the Géoplateforme documentation on cartes.gouv.fr.

Can a GIS extract serve as evidence during an inspection?

It shows your diligence, not your right to fly. Neither the IGN layer nor the SIA dataset is authoritative: only the order of 3 December 2020 and the day's aeronautical publications are binding. A dated extract, with the name of the AIRAC file used and the day's NOTAM and AZBA checks, remains the best record to keep.