Guest blog by Gauri Kangai, Geovation team
At the start of 2018, Geovation was given internationally ‘award-winning’ status. The Geospatial World Form, in Hyderabad, India, awarded Geovation its ‘Geospatial Hub of the Year Award’, applauding that “Geovation has successfully connected individuals and SMEs and created opportunities, envisioned solutions and brought differentiation” to the UK geospatial economy.”
Speaking at the Geospatial World Forum 2018, CEO Nigel Clifford of Ordnance Survey said, “Geospatial technology is actually a fundamental purpose technology. Without it any economy cannot function efficiently”.
It’s fantastic to be recognised for such impact. Our work continues, and currently we are looking for a next cohort of location and property-based technology start-ups to support through our next accelerator Programme.
It’s been six months since we released OS Open Greenspace, showing publicly accessible leisure and recreations spots in urban Britain, and it’s been fantastic seeing people using the map and finding new places to GetOutside. But did you know that it wasn’t the first greenspace map in Great Britain? Or that there are other important reasons to capture green spaces? Julie Procter, Chief Executive of Greenspace Scotland tells us more.
Greenspaces highlighted in Newcastle
Greenspaces matter to people and make a big difference to quality of life, improving health and well-being, delivering environmental services, and creating places where people want to live and businesses choose to invest.
We know that greenspaces can provide cost-effective and sustainable solutions to some of the most urgent problems facing us today – our health, our communities and our economy. To deliver these wide-ranging benefits, and to safeguard the management of our open spaces, we need accurate information about the type, extent, distribution and accessibility of greenspace.
The UK Mapping Festival is a unique collaboration between all those who create, distribute, use and enjoy maps in all their forms. Involving professional bodies, learned societies, government agencies, commercial companies, educational bodies, interest groups and enthusiasts, working to put on a series of events over a six-day period during the week of 2–7 September 2018.
We were hugely proud of our Geovation alumni Refill last week. Refill encourages businesses to allow thirsty passers-by to fill up their water bottles for free and their scheme is being rolled-out across England. And the good news created a splash of national headlines!
We’ve all heard about the issue of single-use plastic bottles and Refill, backed by industry body Water UK expect to cut usage by tens of millions bottles a year. All 15 water companies in England support the expansion of the scheme, which originated in Bristol.
You can use Refill’s app to find water stations and public fountains, or through window signs pointing people in the direction of the nearest one. Whitbread (owner of Costa Coffee and Premier Inn), has already signed up and will allow you to refill your bottles with drinking water in all branches from March 2018.
Refill began collaborating with our Geovation team after winning the Geovation Camp Water Challenge in March 2016. Since then both sides have worked together to develop and launch the app.
Next weekend, 2-4 February, the CityVerve Open Innovation Transportation Hackathon will bring together developers, data scientists, entrepreneurs, designers, and makers to apply creative Internet of Things solutions to transport challenges. They will be making data and hardware from the CityVerve project available to use and there will be mentors on hand to help teams realise their solutions.
The challenges for the weekend will be based around two main areas of focus—cycling and bus stops. CityVerve are looking for solutions that will encourage and enable citizens to adopt cycling and buses as modes of transportation. The scope of these will include, for example:
There will be voice activated kit from the Talkative Bus Stops use case to hack—with the potential to see your solution trialled at bus stops across Greater Manchester as part of CityVerve.
Members from Ordnance Survey’s Geovation team will be supporting the hackathon by providing technical advice and mentorship, helping teams make the most of our range of developer tools and resources throughout the weekend.
Tune into ITV at 7.30pm on Tuesday 30 January to see the nation’s favourite 100 walks revealed across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland*. Alongside National Trust and The Ramblers, we teamed up with ITV last year to encourage outdoors enthusiasts to vote for their favourite walks, and now the results are set to be revealed.
Photo (c) ITV BRITAIN’S FAVOURITE WALKS : TOP 100
Over two and a half hours, presenters Julia Bradbury and Ore Oduba will showcase rambles, scrambles and ambles across the UK’s cities, countryside and coastline. We’re extremely pleased to say that four of our GetOutside champions will also be featuring in the programme, accompanying Julie and Ore on their walks. Look out for Two Blondes Walking in their favourite environment, Dartmoor; Zoe Homes (AKA Splodz) in Scotland; Phoebe Smith, wild camper and extreme sleeper; and the Get Out With the Kids family tackling the Chilterns.
Guest blog by the GEO Business team
Are you working at the cutting edge of geospatial developments? Are geospatial solutions having a major impact on the way you work now and in the future? If so, we would love to hear from you…
The GEO Business team, who organise the annual geospatial show held in London, UK are seeking revolutionary and thought provoking abstracts for a newly launched seminar programme that truly demonstrates the remarkable impact geospatial technologies and solutions are having on our global environment. The deadline to submit an abstract is 29 January 2018.
The brand new seminar programme will run alongside an exhibition of 200+ international exhibitors, a programme of commercial workshops, a strategic senior level conference and a variety of networking opportunities. The next show will take place from 22 – 23 May 2018 at the Business Design Centre in London, UK.
Guest blog by Gary Randle, UK Sales Manager, Cadcorp
If you work in government and want to maximise the benefit of geographic information systems (GIS) and web mapping, becoming familiar with Ordnance Survey (OS) data products is a good place to start. What OS products do we have? How do we best load and manage these products? How can these products complement our own business data? For this reason, at Cadcorp, we’ve been running free onsite Ordnance Survey Data Management Workshops for central government. The workshops are designed to introduce OS data products and offer practical advice about using and managing the data.
When customers first get access to OS products there are a number choices to make. The workshops are designed to help equip users with the knowledge to make the right choices for their organisation. For example:
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.