We’ve been working with the Geospatial Commission alongside The British Geological Survey, Coal Authority, HM Land Registry and The UK Hydrographic Office to create a single Data Exploration Licence. The single licence replaces a number of different agreements from the five partner bodies and allows registers users to freely access available data to research and develop their own ideas and propositions.
We were pleased to provide our own Data Exploration Licence as a template for the new partner body licences. First released to Geovation Hub members as a trial in 2016, we later rolled out the OS Data Exploration Licence in October 2016.
Over the past two years we have seen over 300 registrations from start-ups to large commercial companies sign up to the agreement, including those starting to explore opportunities to create new products and services. We look forward to seeing this trend accelerate with the introduction of the four new licences from the Geospatial Commission, providing users with access to a far wider range of geospatial data.
Today is the 83rd anniversary of the first use of an Ordnance Survey trig pillar, so the perfect time to catch up with Britain’s top trig-bagger, Rob Woodall, on his latest achievement.
I bagged my final Welsh trig pillar in 2008 – sort of. At that time, I counted 660 trig pillars still surviving in Wales, and Red Hill, S6561, east of Builth Wells was my last, on a blustery August day. We celebrated with a Balvenie single malt (somehow not a Penderyn).
Red Hill (Photo: Rob Woodall)
But had I really finished? The OS originally built 684 pillars in Wales – what about the others? At that time, I was focused on extant pillars, trying to get around as many trigs as I could before they were lost to housing developments, road construction, farming operations and the like. I’d visited all the remaining English, Isle of Man and Scottish pillars by 2016, so it was time to think about visiting the remaining vacant trig sites. Some were simply in-situ replacements, the pillars being rebuilt on the same site, with the same flush bracket or occasionally a new one. Sites that used to have a trig pillar, aren’t inherently as interesting to the bagger as those where there’s something to look for, but the scenery is still there (if it hasn’t been built on), and in some cases, the pillars weren’t quite as dead as we thought:
Four of our OS OpenData products are now available in GeoPackage format – an open standard from the Open Geospatial Consortium.
Following positive feedback on the GeoPackage format trial, where many of you asked us for a greater choice of formats, we made a commitment to make our data more accessible, interoperable and quicker to use.
On 10 April we released these four OS OpenData products in GeoPackage format, in addition to their existing formats:
The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that this list is longer than we originally announced. We hope to continue expanding the number of products available in additional formats.
Continuing our series to introduce you to the hard-working individuals within OS and showcase the wide variety of work we do, meet Mark Greaves. Mark has been with us for over 30 years and is definitely a fountain of knowledge here at OS! Here, he gives tells us more about how he keeps OS Net running…
I have been at OS over 32 years and within this time held differing roles. I started as a Field Surveyor for 7 years, I then spent 1 year doing a HND in Surveying, 3 years as a Geodetic Surveyor, 1 year studying for an MSc in Engineering Surveying & Geodesy and 17 years as Geodetic Analyst.
I have been a Lead Consultant for Geodesy for almost 4 years.
If you haven’t heard of Virgin Pulse’s Global Challenge, it is a 100-day challenge to encourage employees to transform their health, wellbeing and engagement levels. With more than 3,000 participants around the world, the Global Challenge is one of the biggest and most highly-anticipated events on the workplace wellbeing calendar. According to their 2018 stats, 80% of participants felt it had a positive impact on their relationship with exercise while 65% said that their company offering membership made it a better place to work.
Making up 22 teams, 154 colleagues from OS signed up! Since February they have been measuring their daily activity, setting goals and inspiring each other to make healthy choices. So far, we have raised £2,000 for Southampton Children’s Hospital Charity (our corporate charity) and this will only increase!
The expanding population of Great Britain brings certain challenges for local authorities. Large cities have become accustomed to rapid growth and increasingly dense living situations, but across the country, other councils are facing pressure to adapt to a rising populace.
Residential property development has plateaued since the 1970s which has led to house prices rising steadily with exceptional spikes in places such as London. Location data can paint a more accurate picture of Britain’s changing landscape by demonstrating trends that differ locally and enabling a greater understanding of how to prepare our infrastructure for a more densely–populated future.
To help local authorities to prepare, the government has set housing targets, to encourage councils to prioritise the development of new and affordable housing.
It’s 70 years since the 1949 Act of Parliament that began the family of National Parks in Great Britain, and our GeoDataViz team have created a stunning poster to showcase the varied landscapes of our 15 beautiful National Parks.
You can buy this poster in the OS Map Shop
Covering a combined area of 23,138 km2 (that’s around 10% of Great Britain and an area slightly larger than Wales) the National Parks offer us a stunning variety of landscapes to explore. With two parks in Scotland, three in Wales and ten in England, they’re accessible to many of us, no matter where we live.
National Parks fortnight kicks off on 6 April, so what better time to be inspired to visit one, and try out some of the 61,000 km of paths to follow?
If you’re an avid reader of our blog or have some surveying knowledge, you may well have heard of a theodolite before. A key instrument in the mapping of Britain (and pretty much everywhere else!), a theodolite is a simple concept built into a precision instrument – a telescope with graduated horizontal and vertical circles attached to enable angles to be measured. Intrigued by this implement, we decided to find out more…
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.
