It’s been 10 years since OS OpenData first launched and we currently have 14 products for you to download and use free of charge as backdrop mapping or for data analysis. Did you know that it includes Royal Mail’s postcode data; administrative boundaries; greenspaces; and detailed basemaps? Find out about four OS OpenData products we believe can most help you.
Update: 1 July 2020, OS APIs now live and available via our OS Data Hub, sign up here
Our OS Explorer Maps and OS Landranger Maps are iconic, and so are their digital counterparts! 1:25 000 Scale Colour Raster and 1:50 000 Scale Colour Raster can be downloaded as georeferenced image files for use on commercial terms – and they’re also available via API.
These maps have enjoyed a successful transition from paper to digital, and you can easily integrate them into your GIS, web and mobile applications. Alongside 1: 2500 000 Scale Colour Raster and Miniscale, they form part of our Leisure style which is available via our new OS Maps API.
Continuing our OS Developer content and adding to our series of blogs introducing the individuals that make up OS, we’ve taken the opportunity to ask our newly appointed Developer Advocate John Hoopes some questions…
A recent report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that one in eight households (12%) in Great Britain has no access to a private or shared garden during the coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown. ONS used our map data to work towards their conclusions, one of many organisations who have contacted us for assistance during the pandemic.
Our Mapping for Emergencies (MfE) service supports the resilience community and is available 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year giving quick access to reactive geospatial support at any time. ONS put in a request for data to help understand how access to greenspace and outdoor gardens may impact Covid infections and to highlight areas with limited outdoor access.
We recently introduced our new range of Mapping and Data APIs which are available from the OS Data Hub.
In this week’s post, we want to help you choose the right one for your use case by presenting a series of user stories and recommending the API that is the best fit. In some instances, there will be more than one option and your choice may come down to experience, software interoperability, or preference.
Told from the perspective of the individual, a user story is a short description of a feature stating the requirement and the reason behind it. Interested? Read on to find out our use case advice.
Guest blog by Alasdair Rae, University of Sheffield
Thanks to the new Ordnance Survey Data Hub, it’s easier than ever for users to get their hands on the treasure trove of geographic data covering the length and breadth of Britain. In this article, I’ll explain how I used some of Ordnance Survey’s digital terrain model data to create a new map of the Scottish Highlands. I will also say a bit about the software and methods, and I’ve shared the data below so anyone who is interested can try it for themselves. But before that, let’s take a look back at the first ‘3D map’ of the Highlands.
Update: 1 July 2020, OS APIs now live and available via our OS Data Hub, sign up here
To help you get started quickly with our APIs, we’ve been working on technical resources that go beyond documentation. This post introduces a key component of that – our new set of copy and paste code examples.
By copying and pasting the code from our new Examples you could have your first mapping application on your web page in just minutes. Examples range from adding a basic map, to extruding 3D buildings, to finding your nearest greenspace.
Showcasing the functionality of our Mapping and Data APIs, we’ve based our examples on well-understood, common usage patterns. They’ll help you get started and even stimulate ideas, giving you inspiration for new features to build into your own applications.
The new Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA) is set to benefit the public sector, businesses, developers and academia. It will deliver the next generation of location data and transform the way people access, share and innovate with geospatial data, through new, richer data, improved access and ease of use and new freedoms to share information.
These new freedoms and the ability to link datasets for third parties included the announcement of the Open Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) product, that will allow you to freely incorporate this key identifier into your data holdings. The OS Open UPRN product will provide a unique identifier for every location that can have an address along with a coordinate. But what do you do if you need to know the address, extra attribution and be able to rely on it as the authoritative source of information? This is where AddressBase Core can help.
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.