Iventis is transforming the way complex operations, such as major events, are planned and managed. For this week’s #OSDeveloper blog, they have been kind enough to tell us how…
Iventis provides a collaborative planning platform for the organisers of the world’s largest and most complex events. With events such as the World Cup or Olympic Games, operations can span whole cities and countries. As a result, event organisers require access to both detailed local mapping and lower scale data to develop their plans.
This is where Iventis comes in. By using the OS Vector Tile API to fetch mapping data and integrating this with CAD and BIM imagery, we are able to provide a seamless and powerful mapping experience.
Hosted by the Royal Geographical Society, on 11 November 2020 the second Geography in Government (GiG) awards took place. Here, our outstanding graduate Jessica Baker details the work that won her the Contribution to the Profession award…
The GiG awards aim to celebrate and recognise the work of members of the geography profession across the civil, crown, and public sector. In January 2020 I submitted my work on colour blind accessible mapping for the Contribution to the Profession category and I was delighted to be shortlisted and go on to win.
Tamsin Forbes, a data scientist at the Department for Transport (DfT), explains how she has used OS and aerial photography data available through the Geospatial Commission’s public sector contracts to support infrastructure planning for electric vehicle charge points.
Working with the Environment Statistics team within the DfT, I’m involved in helping to plan for the future provision of electric vehicle (EV) charge points across the UK.
In a future where vehicles are fully or partially electric, all vehicle users will require adequate access to charge points. The demand on the electricity grid is an important consideration, and to mitigate this the majority of charging should take place at night outside peak hours of electricity consumption. To achieve this it is likely that many charge points will need to be located very close to the property of the vehicle owner, making it important to understand parking availability.
The challenge is that there is no definitive existing dataset that quantifies residential parking availability for the UK. Although various datasets exist which include some information, more research needs to be done to support the planning process.
As part of our #OSDeveloper series, we’re bringing you a guest blog by Liam Mason, spatial analyst and cartographer for the Scottish Government.
After months living and working at home, I decided to stretch my legs and walk the West Highland Way, a long distance route from Milngavie to Fort William and one of Scotland’s Great Trails.
Following 96 miles of ancient paths such as drovers’ and military roads, the route passes from the suburbs of Scotland’s largest city, along the shores of the UK’s largest lake, crossing the remains of a supervolcano, before arriving at the UK’s largest peak.
To commemorate my walk, I wanted to make a map. I’d tracked my efforts using a GPS watch, so I had a wealth of data. Points, tracks, distance, pace, heart rate, elevation… So much data it was a bit overwhelming. What was important for the narrative? What style was I looking for?
Since we released the OS Data Hub in July, as part of the new Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA), we’ve been tracking use and eagerly watching to see how our customers, old and new, will use the platform and APIs.
Three months on and we’re delighted with what we’ve seen. After crunching the numbers of registered users, we’ve identified of the 2,355 users who have registered for the OS Data Hub, 1,845 are new to OS. The majority (76%) of users have registered for the OS OpenData Plan, and across both that and the Premium Plan, customers have carried out over 40 million transactions, with a 100% month-on-month increase in transactions.
Data as of 1 October.
In the nineteenth century, it was believed that cholera was transmitted and spread by miasma (a theory that claimed epidemics were caused by bad odours emanating from rotting organic matter). In 1854 a major outbreak of cholera reached the district of Soho, London. A lack of proper sanitary services and poor drainage meant that the outbreak hit hard.
John Snow was an English physician and a sceptic of the miasma theory. By visually representing the location of each cholera case on a map, Snow was able to show evidence of a connection between the Broad Street water pump and the number of cholera cases in the immediate vicinity.
John Snow’s cholera map.
This map presented the data visually and geographically, allowing us to see a pattern and correlation between the water pump and location of cases. Not only did this insight ultimately lead to the discovery of the source of the outbreak, it forever changed how we interpret our world.
Balkerne enables property owners and insurers to prevent losses from manmade and natural events through predictive, actionable, and location-based intelligence. As co-founder, Harish Pesala is using OS data to develop products that help insurers, brokers, and property owners to act before things go wrong. How? Harish tells us more…
Seeing images in the media of businesses and families severely affected by storms in the UK, we asked ourselves: “Why doesn’t the right information get to the right people at the right time to prevent this from happening?”. From this question, the concept of Balkerne was born.
Given the latest technological advancements and the amount of data available nowadays, we started wondering why a solution that could stop such tremendous losses from happening had not been developed yet. We saw a huge opportunity to make businesses and society more resilient, and decided it was time to act.
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.
