By popular demand, our Geovation team will be delivering another series of geotech workshops across Great Britain. This time, they’re focusing the sessions on OS Open Zoomstack to help you embed OS Maps into your web, mobile and desktop application.
We launched OS Open Zoomstack as a trial in July and over 900 people signed up to take part. We’ve seen over 1,100 downloads of the Vector Tiles, 900+ for GeoPackage and over 400 downloads of the PostGIS Export File. It’s been fantastic seeing OS Open Zoomstack being used, from building an interactive map in a day with Axis Maps to supporting a BBC article on rental prices across Britain and enhancing Pocket Pal’s mapping.
Yes, you heard right. So if you’re an avid benchmark bagger or just intrigued by geographical history, you’ll be delighted to know that, instead of downloading our benchmark archive, you can simply find them on OS Maps desktop. Not only that, but when you click on the specific benchmark, it will tell you which one it is and when it dates back to!
Screenshot of a benchmark on OS Maps near our HQ in Southampton.
We’ve released our first fully automated product derived from large scale source data. At a single press of a button we can create a premium national dataset using the most up-to-date Ordnance Survey (OS) source data in just eight days.
We started work on the project in April 2017 to fully automate the map production of OS VectorMap Local. 18 months later, we’ve released the new automated derived version of OS VectorMap Local, a world leading first!
Termed “benighting”, Mountain Rescue has said that with the clocks going back, there is an annual spike in walkers or climbers needing to be rescued around this time of year.
Due to rescues taking longer in the dark, October had the highest average number of rescuer hours last year. Across the board, the number of mountain call-outs has risen gradually over the last five years from 1,080 in 2012 to 1,467 last year.
“If you want to get out into the mountains and enjoy the same amount of daylight, you need to set out an hour earlier,” said Rob Shepherd, Mountain Rescue stats officer and a member of the team in Llanberis, Snowdonia, one of the busiest regions in England and Wales for rescues.
Below, mountain safety expert and OS GetOutside Champion Jason Rawles shares his tips for staying safe when outside at this time of year.
If you loved our data visualisation showing Great Britain’s largest islands – great news, it’s now available to buy. In case you missed it at the time, our GeoDataViz team worked with Alasdair Rae at the University of Sheffield to explore Britain’s largest islands. They found that there are 82 English, Scottish and Welsh islands larger than 5km2 and created this beautiful poster to showcase their work.
We were overwhelmed with the fantastic response to the poster and inundated with hundreds of questions, many asking about missing islands. As we were only looking at Great Britain’s islands, this didn’t include Northern Ireland’s islands, the Isle of Man or the Channel Islands. You can see more about the difference between Great Britain, the United Kingdom and our Crown Dependencies in this blog. There are many more islands around Great Britain smaller than 5km2 – they’re just not included on the poster.
We also had a lot of requests for a printed poster, and our friends at the University of Sheffield have made this happen. There are a limited number of posters available, at A1 size which you can buy on their website for £15.
Continuing our series to introduce you to the hard-working individuals within OS and showcase the wide variety of work we do, meet Dave Tucker. Dave has been with us for a long time but has always worked out in the field. Here, he gives us an insight on his role in mapping Great Britain…
43 years – I started at OS in April 1975 at 19 years old! I started as a basic grade 4 surveyor after a gruelling survey course lasting 9 months. I’ve since been sponsored for qualifications including an MSc in Surveying. Currently, I am the South Region Manager in Field Operations and have been in this role for 15 years. I have also been an RICS Chartered Surveyor (MRICS) since 2006.
In three words, each day for me is busy, varied and rewarding. I have daily responsibilities such as liaising with my fellow field managers, regional management team and the team of 40 surveyors working remotely across London and the South East (using Skype as appropriate).
We’ve had such a great response to the trial and received a huge amount of feedback from the users, that we’re going to invest in making OS Open Zoomstack a supported product.
For both the downloads and the API we’ll be developing Alpha versions and continue to make changes based on your feedback. We’ll be doing an alpha release shortly for the various downloads. We’ll also continue supporting the API, and will update this with the new data from the Alpha while we plan the release of a fully supported version in the future. Please note that this may involve changes in the API URL at a minimum.
At this point we would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has helped us to make this exciting step!
Ordnance Survey (OS) Partner Basemap share their insights on speed data, why it matters and how their data is available via OS MasterMap Highways Network.
As autonomous vehicles develop around the world, we’re seeing a greater need for accurate data, both in live and static forms.
Live data enables dynamic routing, but it can be hard to pass the data from device to device quickly enough. A 5G network could help this issue, but it may take years to become a reality.
Static data is equally important as you need to have accurate base data which shows the difference between a road and a pavement, where a vehicle is allowed to drive, and any routing restrictions or speed limits. OS & GeoPlace have been working on this via the OS MasterMap Highways Network product, with Department for Transport investing £3 million pounds in its creation.
OS is Britain's mapping agency. We make the most up-to-date and accurate maps of the country. But we're also a digital business, and we use our content to help governments, companies and individuals to be more effective both here and around the world.