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By Jo, 26, April, 2013 8:00 am

In celebration of its 40th anniversary this year, Hampshire’s Marwell Wildlife is bringing a world-class mass public art event to Southampton.

The Go! Rhinos event, will take place in the city over a 10-week period this summer. Southampton will be the home to a herd of sponsored rhino sculptures, which will be placed at various locations across the city centre to form a rhino trail.

Various organisations will be sponsoring the rhino sculptures, and the rhinos will be decorated by local professional artists, providing a unique design on each piece – part of the fun will be following the trail and choosing your favourite rhino!

Reggie the rhino and some friends

As well as providing the opportunity to showcase local artistic talent, the event encourages outdoors exploration, whilst raising significant funds for local charities; Marwell Wildlife, The Rose Road Association and Wessex Heartbeat’s High 5 Appeal.

Ordnance Survey will be involved in a variety of ways. We are sponsoring one of the rhinos, which will be forming part of the rhino trail, and will be producing the official Southampton trail map. We’ll also be plotting the route of the rhinos online using OS OpenSpace data.

Continue reading 'Go! Rhinos'»

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By Jo, 19, March, 2013 8:00 am

In February 2013, Kevin Pallant from Chippenham, Cambridgeshire, embarked on a challenging five-day expedition travelling over 200 km, 145 km north of the Arctic Circle, to raise funds for charity. 

Kevin, one of our surveyors, swopped the comforts of home to take part in the Arctic Circle Dog Sled trip organised by Charity Challenge. Kevin’s job involves working outside surveying the buildings, roads and features of Great Britain in all weathers. The recent cold snap was good practice for this trip of a lifetime, where temperatures varied from -5^oC to -27^oC.

Kevin travelled over frozen lakes, through snow covered forests and into the mountains, with the added challenge of driving a team of Huskies. The challenge started near Kiruna, Northern Sweden, and after meeting and getting to know the other participants, the first task was to master how to harness and drive a team of four Huskies without falling off.

The group travelled across the wilds of Northern Sweden, through forests and across frozen lakes. The stunning scenery, vast expanses of snowy landscape and blue sky were a joy to be in, such a change to the drab grey days. Travelling at 15 km an hour with only the sounds of the sled runners, dog’s paws going over the ice and snow and the jangle of the harnesses to fill the ears, was a delightful experience.

Continue reading 'Cambridgeshire surveyor embarks on Arctic dog-sled fund-raising expedition'»

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By Gemma, 20, December, 2012 8:00 am

A highly successful 2012 for Great Britain is drawing to a close, so it’s the perfect time to share with you our top ten most popular blog stories from the year. If you’re new to the blog, you’ll get a feel for the things we talk about; and if you’re a regular blog-reader, remind yourself of what we’ve been talking about this year.

And if there’s anything you’d like to see more of or any questions you’d like answered on the blog – let us know.

1. Putting our Team GB medal winners on the map – the Olympics dominated the news this summer and also proved popular on the blog. We mapped out the birthplaces of the TeamGB medal-winning athletes using our OS OpenSpace app.

2. Are you a train-station spotter? Find out in our quiz… – our regular map extract quiz hit the jackpot when we asked you to identify railway stations on the map. If you haven’t looked before, test your knowledge now.

3. The evolution of Ordnance Survey mapping – if you’re a lover of old maps, you may be aware of the changes that have taken place on Ordnance Survey maps over the years. Our graphic illustrates the changes.

4. On the map at London’s City Hall – did you know that City Hall in London sports a superb new imagery graphic of London’s boroughs on its atrium floor? Check out the OS MasterMap Imagery Layer.

5. Ten gift ideas for the map lover in your life – it’s not too late! You’ve still got time to find the perfect gift and our top ten should give you some inspiration.

Continue reading 'Our top ten stories for 2012'»

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By Gemma, 20, November, 2012 8:00 am

Did you know that City Hall in London sports a superb new imagery graphic of London’s boroughs on its atrium floor? Open to the public, and home to the Greater London Authority (GLA) and the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, the atrium floor is covered in our OS MasterMap Imagery Layer.

Jean Martin, Danny Hyam, Boris Johnson, Corin Pegden, Vanessa Lawrence CB, Graham Cole and Gareth Baker

Continue reading 'On the map at London’s City Hall'»

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By Gemma, 21, September, 2012 8:00 am

The latest edition of our OS Insider newsletter was published this week and we’ve included a competition that will be familiar to our regular blog readers. 

As you can see from the picture above, we’ve published six mapping extracts – and this time, if you name them all correctly, you’ll be in with a chance of winning a prize. Answers need to be emailed or posted to us by Friday 12 October – no answers posted via the blog will be entered into the competition.

Continue reading 'Name the six mapping extracts in our competition'»

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By Gemma, 19, September, 2012 8:00 am

As the geo-community are attending this week’s AGI conference, it is the perfect time to bring you up to date on everything that’s been happening at Ordnance Survey – and a little bit from the outside world of GI and mapping too.

Our OS Insider newsletter has been printed and handed out to delegates at the conference, and it’s also available online as a PDF. There’s all the latest on our GeoVation Challenges, Digimap for Schools, the Public Sector Mapping Agreement and much more.

If you’re a digital data customer or partner of ours, then you may also be interested in reading about OS Insight. The OS Insight communication channel is designed to engage with our customers and partners about the development of our current and future product portfolio. By working together throughout our product life cycles, we will be able to develop the best products and services to meet our customers’ needs, and to ensure GI software and associated tools are ready to accommodate the product developments once they are released.

Continue reading 'Read the latest edition of OS Insider newsletter'»

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By Gemma, 27, June, 2012 8:00 am

Last weekend saw 13 teams gather at our Cardiff GeoVation Camp to pitch their ideas for our GeoVation Challenge ‘How can we connect communities and visitors along the Wales Coast Path?’

The GeoVators were working on our formula, Innovation = Problem x Solution x Execution and at the end of the weekend the judging panel selected 8 finalists to go forward to the GeoVation Showcase on 18 July.

We’re pleased to announce our finalists are:

Continue reading 'GeoVation finalists announced for Wales Coast Path challenge'»

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By Gemma, 21, June, 2012 8:00 am

You might have read our recent blog post on the latest edition of our OS Insider newsletter being published. If you haven’t read the newsletter before, we publish it 2-3 times a year to bring you up-to-date with our latest news. 

This article on data use in the health sector is just one of the articles we feature this time – have a read, and if you like it, you can read the whole newsletter online now. 

Since the launch of the Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA) in April 2011, 2 319 members have signed up and 263 are from the health sector. Traditionally, health sector members were Primary Care Trusts, but the number of NHS Hospital Trusts using geographic information (GI) is increasing. Just 12 months ago only 21 NHS Hospital Trusts were members, and as of May 2012, there are now 89. Despite this, there is still enormous potential for growth in the health sector of the PSMA with many more trusts and authorities yet to fully realise the benefits to be gained from the use of mapping and geographic data. 

Of those in the health sector currently using digital data, they are seeing the benefits of carrying out public health analysis, service planning and delivery, emergency response and planning and estate and facility management. For example, Luton Primary Care Trust used maps to pinpoint areas where immunisations rates were low, target resources and establish systems to measure the effectiveness of changes to the child immunisation programme. 

Continue reading 'Growing data use in the health sector'»