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From one revolution to another
About Ordnance Survey
Two revolutions link the history of Ordnance Survey. The first engulfed France during the late eighteenth century – with Britain fearing invasion as a result. The second sees us at the heart of the ongoing digital revolution, with web mapping services and geographic information transforming business and public services.
It was back in 1791, whilst planning defences to repel any invasion, that the Government realised the South Coast of England needed to be comprehensively and accurately mapped. So it instructed its Board of Ordnance – the defence ministry of the day – to carry out the necessary survey work.
That historic decision led to the mapping of the whole country in detail, and is also the source of the intriguing name 'Ordnance Survey'.
Today Ordnance Survey is a dynamic, self-financing £120-million-a-year civilian organisation. We’re at the forefront of the digital economy, producing digital mapping products and paper maps for business, leisure, administrative and educational use. We are still part of the UK Government, but we cover our costs by selling our products and licensing others to use our data.
Since 1999 we have had government 'Trading Fund' status, giving us more responsibility for our own finances and planning and more freedom to develop new initiatives.
Britain's favourite maps
To the public, Ordnance Survey is best known for its paper maps. In fact, there are around 650 different recreational and leisure maps alone, together covering every corner of Britain. And even in the internet age, we still sell around 2.5 million paper maps every year.
But today it is digital mapping data that accounts for around 90% of our business. Both the public and private sectors need an accurate, reliable geographic framework to help them deliver effective and efficient services and make better decisions.
As 80% of all information collected in Britain has some geographic feature to it – from the location of people, buildings, and postcodes to administrative boundaries – the potential for linking and analysing different sets of information is enormous.
Geographic information is used to help deliver efficiencies in a range of public services, from saving money through reorganising public transport routes and identifying areas of health service deprivation, to helping the police detect crime patterns and catch criminals.
And the uses in the private sector are ever growing, including targeting marketing effort and calculating instances of insurance fraud; as well as providing location-based services on smartphones and developing satnavs and transport logistics systems.
Surveying the fast-changing landscape
Our current workforce is around 1,200 people including about 300 surveyors who constantly measure and record the changing British landscape.
They use high-tech measuring equipment to gather information, including state-of-the-art satellite technology and theodolite 'total stations' – with lasers to measure distances. We record the shapes of individual buildings and the precise alignment of roads and pavements.
Our national network of around 100 base stations constantly transmit their GPS-observed positions to a central processing hub. The network provides real-time positional accuracy down to centimetre level. Previously, thousands of triangulation stations – including the familiar concrete ‘trig pillars’ on high ground – were the bedrock for positioning calculations.
Information gathered by ground staff is complemented by an intensive programme of aerial photography which is viewed in 3D.The resulting high-definition images – which show detail as sharp as the pattern of road markings – can then be overlaid with existing map data to check where features have changed so that instant updates can be recorded.
All the new information from both ground and air surveys is added to the OS MasterMap database at our Southampton head office. The result is a definitive digital picture of Britain’s geography and the largest database of its kind anywhere in the world, made up of almost half a billion features.
In addition to this topographic mapping, the OS MasterMap family is also made up of different ‘layers’ which encompass detailed aerial imagery and a nationwide road network – something which acts as the foundation to many of the market leading satnavs.
Encouraging open innovation
Since April 2010, we have made a range of mapping data available for free to foster innovation and encourage government transparency. Anyone from entrepreneurs and web developers to ramblers can download data from the OS OpenData service to help them build applications underpinned by geography. Postcode and administrative boundary datasets are among those freely available and have already been used in a variety of interesting and innovative uses.
We also offer free access to our mapping through the web mapping API OS OpenSpace. It is an easy way to get Ordnance Survey mapping embedded in a website or online application, with the ability to plot routes, pan and zoom through mapping scales and search via place names or postcodes. There is even a Web Map Builder service which removes the need to write a single line of code.
The final piece of our open innovation programme is GeoVation – an initiative set up to provide seed funding for sustainable business ventures based on geography. First established in October 2009, GeoVation helps entrepreneurs and developers bring their map-based ideas to life by running themed challenges. Each challenge aims to encourage ideas with a social, environmental or economic benefit, and culminates in a ‘Dragons’ Den’ style showcase where shortlisted entrants go head-to-head to secure investment.
You can find out much more about Ordnance Survey and the work we do by visiting our blog. You can also follow us on Twitter.
If you would like to read more about our history, read these books online:
A History of the Ordnance Survey edited by W. A. Seymour (434 pages)
Map-makers to Britain since 1791 by Tim Owen and Elaine Pilbeam (206 pages)
Re-triangualtion of Britain forwarded by Major-General Edge (395 pages)