We’d like to put some friendly faces to the people working at OS and showcase the wide variety of work we do. As today is the International Day of Charity, we’re starting with Teena Munden, Business Centre Manager and chief fundraiser at OS.
I celebrated my 10-year OS anniversary last month!
While I have always worked within the business centre, I started out as a Business Centre Executive. Five years ago, I applied for my current managerial role. It felt like a natural progression and, while I was nervous about the increased responsibility, I feel I have thrived as Business Centre Manager. OS has been very accommodating over the years and despite my promotion I was able to continue working part-time to fit in with childcare.
Teena with Solent Mind CEO Kevin Gardner, left and former OS CEO Nigel Clifford, right
Inspired by the Mapbox blog – Tim Manners in our OS Labs team built this awesome demo application to showcase the dynamic hillshade. The demo includes a widget which enables you to change the light source directly on the client and see the map change in real-time. Tim used our OS Terrain 50 DTM grid dataset to generate a series of Terrain-RGB tiles. These tiles contain elevation data encoded in raster PNG tiles as colour values that can be decoded to raw heights in metres and rendered on the client-side for customisable terrain visualisations. Take a look below for how it appears when combined this with the OS Open Zoomstack Vector Tile API:
We want to get one million people across Great Britain active outdoors on Sunday 30 September for the first ever National GetOutside Day. It’s a part of ukactive’s European Week of Sport which sees a huge range of events taking place nationwide in a mission to improve the health of the nation by getting more people, more active, more often.
Throughout the day, free events are taking place all over Great Britain, including two organised walks led by OS GetOutside ambassadors Ben Fogle, Kenton Cool, Sean Conway and Mel Nicholls. Plus events hosted by OS GetOutside Champions, self-guided walks, or you can create your own events with our free pack.
It’s really important that everyone can get involved, whether you live in the town or the countryside. You can head to your local park, walk along the river, follow an urban sculpture train, try out a new cycle route, or whatever works for you.
While 2018 marks the 227th anniversary of Ordnance Survey, lest we forget it is also the 82nd anniversary of the first observations from our ‘hotine’ trig pillar!
If you want to find out who created our well-known trig pillars and the memorial we have for him at our head office, you’re in the right place.
Brigadier Martin Hotine CMG CBE RE was born on 17 June 1898, in Wandsworth, London. He read mathematics at Magdalene College and was then commissioned into the Royal Engineers (RE). Hotine was in the RE for many years and served in both the First and Second World Wars.
Elsa joined our Data Office in Southampton for work experience recently and shares her experience within the team.
I’m in year 12 studying Geography, Maths, Further Maths and English A-Levels in Devon. Once in the Data Office team I had the chance to work on my own project, which was on the archaeological sites of Dartmoor. This was ideal as I became interested in OS mapping from walking on the moors training for the Ten Tors challenge.
The Geospatial Commission, created by the UK government in November 2017, is inviting geospatial players and beyond to help shape the UK geospatial industry with its call for evidence to be a geospatial world leader. It is hoped the public consultation will help the industry support economic growth and unlock further value, which is estimated to be in the region of £11 billion a year. The geospatial call for evidence will play a significant role in setting the UK’s future geospatial vision. It will focus on innovation, enhancing geospatial assets and driving investment.
Neil Ackroyd, interim CEO of Ordnance Survey, said: “OS has been supporting Great Britain’s geospatial needs as its core task over its long history and we’ve seen first-hand the crucial role accurate geospatial can play. Whether it’s in national resilience, planning and critical infrastructure, or ensuring ambulances turn up at the correct location, geospatial has always been there. OS is pleased to be able to support the Geospatial Commission and we welcome this public opportunity to shape our industry and recognise the challenge to adapt and enhance our combined capabilities.”
In the past decade, as new technologies and innovative ways of thinking have emerged, we have worked on many ground-breaking projects that are being enabled by geospatial data, delivering services and solutions to nations, cities and communities. The role that geospatial can play in emerging markets is of course key to this consultation covering a breadth of opportunity from connectivity for citizens, through environmental stewardship to the new digital infrastructure required for the UK. The announcement of the geospatial strategy is very timely and this consultation is a significant event to build on the UK’s recognised position as a world leader in this field, putting geospatial at the heart of policy and government service delivery supporting future economic growth.
Find out more about the consultation and take part: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-launch-call-for-evidence-to-be-geospatial-world-leader
Celebrate the UK’s first ever Mapping Festival with a week-long programme of education, inspiration, entertainment and most importantly, maps! It’s being held in London from 2-7 September 2018.
The UK Mapping Festival (UKMF) will feature exhibitions, workshops, visits, social gatherings, seminars with Festival guests, and activities for families and young people.
There are three exciting conference days, around the themes of GeoTechnologies, Mapping for the Future and Imagery and Survey in a 3D world. Talks from leading specialists and industry innovators along with hands-on workshops allow you to hear about and experience some of the latest developments in our rapidly changing world.
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.