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By Gemma, 2, April, 2013 8:00 am

We are excited to launch the latest product in the OS MasterMap family, Sites Layer.

OS MasterMap Sites Layer is a nationally maintained dataset that maps the detailed extent of important locations such as airports, schools, hospitals, ports, utility and infrastructure sites and more. The points of access into these sites from the nearest road network are also provided.

This initial release of OS MasterMap Sites Layer focuses on sites in the following themes: Air Transport (such as airports, heliports and airfields), Education (such as schools and university campuses), Medical Care (such as medical care centres, hospices and hospitals), Rail Transport (such as railway station, tram station, vehicular rail terminal), Road Transport (such as coach station, bus station, road user services), Water Transport (such as ports, vehicular and passenger ferry terminals), Utility and Industrial (such as oil terminal, chemical works, oil and gas distribution or storage).

Continue reading 'We’ve launched OS MasterMap Sites Layer'»

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By Holly, 19, August, 2011 8:00 am

For the last in our series of posts this week celebrating the Lake District National Park we’re looking at how Cumbria is returning to normal after the floods of November 2009.

The day of 19 November 2009 will remain in the memories of those living in Cumbria, and in particular Cockermouth for some time to come. Heavy rains had caused the rivers Derwent and Cocker, which both meet in Cockermouth, to rise and burst their banks. It was the time it took for the waters to take over the town that caught many unawares and unprepared. By midday the water levels were high, but Main Street was dry, by 3pm the water was a foot deep on Main Street and by midnight Main Street and some of it’s side streets had been transformed into a raging torrent of water which reached up to 8ft deep in places. I’d watched the footage on the television and thought that it looked bad – but it wasn’t until I visited Cockermouth earlier this year that I realised just how bad it had been.

Many bridges, like this one at Little Braithwaite, were destroyed during the floods.

Cockermouth wasn’t the only place affected by the floods. Workington, at the mouth of the River Derwent, was also badly affected with flood water. Being down stream from where the two flooded rivers met in Cockermouth, the flood waters came rushing downstream and engulfed Workington. The wall of water took out several bridges in the town – leaving only the railway bridge left as the river crossing, effectively cutting the town in two. Continue reading 'After the floods – putting Cumbria back together'»

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By Holly, 17, August, 2011 8:00 am

This week we're celebrating 60 years of the Lake District National Park.

This week we’re celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Lake District National Park. Today we’re looking at the national park authority and how they rely on Ordnance Survey mapping data. Today we’re talking to Rosemary Long who is a GIS Officer for the Lake District National Park (LDNP). Rosemary has worked for LDNP for over ten years but has been in her current role since March 2011.

What’s a typical day like for you Rosemary?
No two days here are ever the same in the GIS team. The one constant thing that we have to deal with though is location. When we need to show someone where something is in the Lake District the best way is to show them on a map – and the best maps of the Lake District are Ordnance Survey ones. Continue reading 'Lake District National Park – relying on geography'»

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By Paul, 19, July, 2011 1:24 pm

There isn’t a single part of Britain that doesn’t see some change to its geography. From bustling city centre to wind-swept moorland, change is everywhere. And to help illustrate the fact, we’ve made this short film that shows the cumulative changes made to the OS MasterMap database, the nation’s 21st century geographic Doomsday Book, which is updated around 5,000 times every day.

The video shows an 18 month period in which you’ll see there isn’t a single part of the country that hasn’t been updated. That’s a lot of change.

And if you want to learn more about how we map change, have a read about our Remote Sensing team, a day in the life of a surveyor or the work of our Flying Unit.

You might also like this visualisation showing 7 years of change in Swindon – it’s pretty incredible.

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By Paul, 17, May, 2011 7:47 am

This week is ‘Walk to School Week,’ a national initiative designed to encourage parents to ditch the car and get their kids walking. The campaign is run by Living Streets, the national charity which campaigns for pedestrians. They aim to help create safe, attractive and enjoyable streets, where people want to walk.

Now, I’m sure there are very few people who would object to the idea of getting children to be more active whilst getting some school run vehicles off the road. That’s good news for everyone involved. It saves money, lowers congestion, pollution and is great exercise.

Walking Bus - helping pupils walk to school.

But I can understand why some parents are reluctant to let their children walk to school alone. Roads are dangerous places, particularly early in the morning. And with that in mind I was reminded to something going on in Daventry.

Continue reading 'Want to ditch the school run? Try a walking bus…'»

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By Paul, 12, April, 2011 8:41 am

There are around 250 Ordnance Survey surveyors based across Britain.

I’ve been asked a few times whether there really are enough changes to the landscape to warrant an army of 250 surveyors and 2 aircraft mapping them. My answer is always to think of your own town (or one nearby) and the changes that happen there over the course of a year. New buildings appear whilst others are pulled down, the road layout changes and new footpaths are laid.

Change is everywhere.

Now think about all those changes multiplied across the entire country and you start to get the picture.

But like all constant and gradual change, it’s still easy to miss. It’s only when you’re reminded of how things were that you can see how far you’ve come.

So that’s why we’ve built a visualisation showing all the change that has occurred in the north-west of Swindon over the last 7 years. It’s been made by archiving every change made to OS MasterMap Topography Layer since October 2004.

The scale and scope of the transformation is quite astonishing.

But remember that the physical changes only reveal only some of the story. When you watch the video think about all the questions it raises.

What kind of underground infrastructure would need to be put in place? What planning would need to go into providing local services like rubbish collection and public transport? Are there enough schools or GPs to cover the new population? With the loss of green spaces, would you want to model the impact on surface water in case of flooding? Will the roads cope with the increase in congestion?  It goes on and on.

And if you think again about that multiplied across the entire country, you start to realise the incredibly important role that geographic information plays in everyone’s lives.

So next time someone asks me if there really is that much change, I’m just going to show them this…

To find out more about how we keep mapping data up-to-date, you might like to this post on a day in the life of a surveyor, or how we use aerial imagery.

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By Gemma, 5, April, 2011 7:06 am

Last week, 1 April, saw the launch of the Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA). This means that public sector organisations in England and Wales have access to most of Ordnance Survey’s mapping data under a single agreement for the first time.

The PSMA is open to the 750 public sector organisations previously covered by other agreements with us – such as the Pan Government and Mapping Services agreements – as well as 1,000s of others in the public sector. It covers local and central government organisations, as well as health bodies, town and parish councils, Welsh community councils, UK Search and Rescue organisations and many more.

We invited those public sector organisations already in agreements with us to sign up for the PSMA from February 2011. We were really pleased that 75% of organisations took up the opportunity. For everyone else, our new PSMA website went live on 1 April.

For the first time our public sector customers can now order and receive their data online. PSMA members can also contact each other through the new website and share ideas on the dedicated PSMA community forum.

By making it easier for PSMA members to contact each other and widening the access to data through the PSMA, this will help deliver significant cost savings for the public sector, and greater data sharing. And it’s not just about widening access.

The geographic data we provide, including our OS MasterMap products, will be free at the point of use for public sector bodies that join up. It will not be subject to limits on re-use when used internally within the public sector for public sector activities.

The new agreement also enables sharing of our data, and members’ derived data, with anyone to support delivery of the member’s public sector activity.

We’re hoping to see our data being used in new and innovative ways to improve efficiency, deliver cost savings and improve front-line services across England and Wales.

You can find more information on the PSMA and benefits for members on our website.

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By Gemma, 17, September, 2010 8:51 am

OS MasterMap is our flagship product family, but have you ever wondered how a photo taken by a plane makes it onto a computer screen as a piece of data? Photogrammetry is the science of measuring and interpreting objects from photographs to answer questions like how high is that feature?

Remote Sensing is the process of acquiring information without coming into physical contact with the subject under investigation. We use this process, in conjunction with ground-based revision by our field surveyors, to update our large-scale databases

We have a large contract in place with external suppliers to supplement our own flying and photogrammetric production. This gives us the capacity to have to 6 planes flying on our behalf at any one time, allowing us to make best use of good weather conditions and process 60 000 to 70 000 sq km (more than a quarter) of Great Britain each year.

An image taken by one of our digital cameras

Continue reading 'A bird’s-eye view'»

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By Gemma, 3, August, 2010 9:59 am

We recently caught up with two of our Inverness surveyors to find out what challenges they face in their remote corner of Scotland. They mentioned mapping the changes at a hydro scheme and I thought it might be an idea to find out how we updated our OS MasterMap database to show the Glendoe Hydro Scheme, Scotland’s largest recent civil engineering project. Craig and Dave faced a technical challenge in finding the best way to map the new and changed topographical features.

The Glendoe Hydro Scheme is located in the hills above Loch Ness near Fort Augustus and although a significant part of the project is underground, many new and changed features needed to be incorporated into our OS MasterMap database. These included the dam wall, the reservoir, all of the access and service roads, changes to water courses and their associated walls and sluices, and changes to the extents of vegetation and other surface features.

Glendoe as shown in OS OpenData

The area was originally surveyed using photogrammetry and then published at a scale of 1:10000. Peter Todd, Senior Production Manager at Ordnance Survey said, “Photogrammetry would be the normal approach to revising a large area of change in a remote location, but our surveyors chose to work on the ground for a number of reasons: the development was classified as a prestige site so we needed to update our data before the official opening with Queen Elizabeth II; with unpredictable weather in the area we couldn’t guarantee we could fly over and take the imagery in time; and the reservoir would not be filled with water until just before the opening, so we would need to survey the edge of the water by ground methods anyway.”

Our surveyors use OS Net, the country’s most comprehensive GPS correction network with 90 base stations across Great Britain. OS Net ensures centimetre level accuracy for data-collection operations ensuring Ordnance Survey’s 5000 daily changes can be relied on. The surveyors’ car transmits a signal back to our Southampton head office creating a virtual reference station. A radio signal then transmits the data to the surveyors’ mobile GPS receiver. Doing this depends on maintaining a reliable mobile phone connection to the hub in Southampton and a radio link between the receiver and the repeater in the car. Mobile phone coverage can be a problem in remote areas of Scotland and it proved to be the case on this task. For parts of the site Craig and Dave needed to find an alternative to their normal approach.

They fixed approximately 12 local base stations in the parts of the site where there was no mobile phone signal. Observations were taken over a period of about 15 minutes at each station and the results processed using Leica Geo Office software by one of our GPS technical advisers who was also working in the area at the time. These local base stations were expected to provide sufficient control for RTK methods using two receivers in the areas without a mobile phone signal, but the surveyors found that there were still areas where they could not receive the correction data broadcast from the local base by radio. In these situations the local base network was supplemented by a series of stations that were fixed as simple RTK detail points. These points were used with a two-receiver solution to capture the remaining data. This innovative solution was acceptable considering the accuracies expected and the type of detail being surveyed.

The Glendoe Hydro Scheme generates 100MW of energy; enough to power every home in a city the size of Glasgow. Glendoe’s 600 m head (the drop from the reservoir to the turbine) is the highest of any hydro electric scheme in the UK. The 905 metre-long dam, a rock-filled embankment 35 metres above the valley floor, is hidden from view from all of the current houses and public roads in the area.  

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By Cartographic Design team, 2, July, 2010 9:39 am

The British Cartographic Society (BCS) held their annual symposium recently with a number of people from Ordnance Survey attending. Not surprisingly, there were several members of our cartography team there, including Bob Lilley, our Head of Cartography and the current President of BCS. I caught up with Chris Wesson to get a behind the scenes view of the event…

“The opening day saw Gary, Owain and Alex from our Products team gave an introduction to OS VectorMap Local to an audience of geographic information system (GIS) users and map designers. Other companies then talked through how they had used OS VectorMap Local.

“On day two Charley and I ran a workshop on ‘Making the Most of OS MasterMap’ with this year’s audience coming from cartographic houses, local councils, national libraries and other government agencies. This year’s workshop focused on a fictional disaster planning exercise based around an explosion and plotting its impact on the surrounding area by using the feature attribution of OS MasterMap within a GIS. Luckily there were no technical glitches and it all ran smoothly!

“Our exhibition stand proved to be popular, especially a poster version of the local area mapped using various different OS OpenData products. The original version of the map, which Charley produced with help from graphic designer John, will appear in the next edition of The Cartographic Journal.

“Bob Lilley gave his presidential address – a fascinating insight into his career in parallel with the evolution of Ordnance Survey – and last but by no means least he helped produce a competition-winning 3D model of Australia from Play-Doh!”

It sounded like a successful event for our team, you can find out more about one of the award winners from the event, for the Ordnance Survey OS MasterMap award for ‘Better Mapping’, in our recent press release.

Photos from top left: Delegates gathering at the BCS annual symposium; Chris, Bob and Charley; OS MasterMap workshop; Bob and his Play-Doh model.