Do you prefer to keep to the straight and narrow? Or are you the type that goes around in circles?
Our Graduate Consultant Data Scientist, Jacob Rainbow, has conducted an analysis on the walking preferences of OS Maps app users.
One interesting aspect he has discovered is that there is an almost fifty-fifty split in the publicly available routes across Great Britain that can be walked in a day (25km or less). Of the 150,000 ‘returning’ routes that qualified under Jacob’s criteria, 46% are linear. This means they are ‘there and back’ walks, where people retrace their steps along the same path and cover the same ground.
Whereas the other 54% of routes are of a more looped nature. These are the walks where you feel like you’re constantly moving forward, seeing new things and eventually find yourself back where you started.
One of the most popular ‘looped routes’ in Great Britain: the Pyg Track ascent of The Snowdon Horseshoe.
Geovation is holding a series of hands-on introductory workshops to teach attendees the principles of visualising with geographic data. As all tickets were snapped up for both our London HQ and Edinburgh sessions, we’ve decided to run four more events around GB over the next few weeks. Disclaimer – these events are FREE to attend!
Citing his inspiration as our post that reimagined Winchester as the nation’s capital, we recently published a guest blog by John Murray. Following the episode of Channel 4’s Britain’s Most Historic Towns, John replicated our technique to reimagine Chester (Britain’s most Roman town) as the capital.
Out of curiosity, we thought it could be interesting to see what other cities would look like if they were the capital. As with Winchester, many cities have backstories which historically make them viable capital candidates. We got our Graduate Consultant Data Scientist, Jacob Rainbow, involved and, as with the Winchester map, he applied the same process.
York reimagined as the capital.
Have you heard of Microsoft HoloLens? No, nor me. However, I was lucky enough to spend some time with one of our technology lab engineers Layla Gordon to find out more.
While VR (virtual reality) headsets and AR (augmented reality) apps were once pioneering, Microsoft HoloLens utilises an even more cutting-edge mixed reality technology.
VR headsets have been the latest visualisation trend and are mostly well known for their popularity in the gaming industry. As I am sure many of you know, VR headsets simulate entirely virtual worlds and require both a console and controller. The product has no association with reality and as such, creates an immersive experience for the user.
Guest blog by Ewan Campbell, composer of Glynde.
In many ways cartography is to a landscape, what music notation is to sound. They both use two-dimensional visualisations to represent something which is multi-dimensional, and in the process create a beautiful pictorial format of their own. My map enthusiasm is driven by a desire for the overview that a maps offers, and the scope to explore the virtual depiction of a landscape.
There is however a crucial difference between the two idioms: music is always experienced through the temporal dimension, and time, as we know it, can only ever run forwards. No matter how many repeats, verses, loops or recapitulations a composer may decide to add there is always a beginning which at some moment later must be followed by an ending. As a result traditional music notation is linear, and read forwards like a book. The aim of my cartographic music is to make the musical form visible. The 2-dimensional score offers a structural overview of the virtual musical soundscape, which can be imaginatively entered into, just as one would ‘read’ a topographical map.
Glynde, by Ewan Campbell
For the last two months we’ve been promoting our OS OpenData product trial. A big thank-you to everyone who has got involved so far, we’ve had an impressive 5,500 website visits and 333GB of opendata downloaded. While most participants are based in Great Britain, the map below shows the trial has gone worldwide reaching more than 20 countries!
If you haven’t heard about the trial, it’s been created to improve your experience. Since the launch of OS OpenData in 2010, we’ve supplied our data in a GML and/or SHP format. However, our users have been telling us that they sometimes struggle to work with these formats. We wanted to explore exporting our data in a range of different formats to find a format that works best for the masses.
We chose nine OS OpenData products for you to test. As you can see, OS Open Roads has had the most trial formats downloaded so far.
Thank-you to everyone who has got involved so far and, for those who haven’t, there is still time left! We need you to help us improve the products you use.
Access the trial here by the 18 May 2018 deadline and send us your feedback: http://data-format-trial-osonline.opendata.arcgis.com/
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.
