Ordnance Survey – Great Britain's national mapping agency
![Ordnance Survey home page [logo]](/images/gui/logo-os.gif){kind=logo}
Welcome to the Research information pages. Please visit these pages to learn more about who we are and what we do.
Our role
Our purpose is to ensure successful futures for Ordnance Survey, its partners and the nation as a whole. We aim to project an image of Ordnance Survey as a forward looking organisation, prepared to set and influence the direction of the information industry through the development of products and services based on geography. We are here to actively advance Ordnance Survey's success into a wide and diverse partner network and to ensure that the United Kingdom remains at the forefront of geographic information (GI) development and exploitation.
Research programme
Our research is currently structured and carried out by seven research teams:
- GeoUsers: understanding user needs: Attempts to anticipate users' future requirements for GI and the manner in which the information is presented to the user.
- Data Capture: Research in this area attempts to both drive down the cost of data capture and to enable new types of data to be captured.
- Data modelling, visualisation & interaction: This team develops new models to represent existing and new spatial data in ways that enable better and more efficient storage, retrieval and manipulation of the data.
- Generalisation: This team is concentrating on the derivation of mid- and small-scale maps from OS MasterMap®.
- GeoSemantics: Research into ways of representing the meaning of Ordnance Survey's data and geographical knowledge using machine-readable descriptions known as ontologies, based on semantic web technology.
- Vernacular Geography: Research into people's sense of space.
- GeoTeq: This team investigates emerging technologies. How Ordnance Survey can make use of new technology and the potential for using Ordnance Survey data within new technical environments.
Research Annual Review Published
In a rapidly changing technological environment, what does the future hold for Ordnance Survey and its stakeholders? How will Geographic Information be captured, managed, traded and used, now and in the future?
Ordnance Survey's Research teams are using a combination of research, innovation, creativity, design, prototyping and imagination to meet the challenges the future poses.
The Research Annual Review records our progress over the last year and can be downloaded here: