We do love a different take on a map, and Sasha Trubetskoy provided that with his London Underground-style map of Britain’s Roman roads. This historic map with a difference proved hugely popular recently and was a follow-up on Sasha’s work on a European map.
The Queensferry Crossing opens to traffic today and joins the Forth Road Bridge and Forth Bridge in spanning the Firth of Forth. Our surveyors Derek Smith and Guy Rodger visited the site last week to add some final details, along with Alastair Dalton from The Scotsman newspaper.
OS MasterMap showing the three bridges
By Neil Dewfield, Principal Consultant, Ordnance Survey International
Why does it matter how geospatially mature you are? What impact does geospatial maturity have on life chances, on government policy making, on a nation’s economy?
It feels as though we’re at a moment in history where these questions are being asked increasingly often. And I sense we’ll look back on this as a time of revolutionary change in the geospatial world. Tech development has been exponential over the last decade, creating a brave new world of opportunities to harness geospatial intelligence for societal good. High-quality geographic data can now power effective decision and policy making in government; it can support sustainable growth and deliver real benefits to a whole nation. Being able accurately to locate assets and resources and to know how they’re being used helps authorities design and focus public services, and to engage and involve citizens in this process. And, as cities get smarter, changes to how these services work can be made in near real time.
Did you know that OS Maps subscribers added over 400,000 routes to the service over the last 12 months? We’ve analysed the (almost) 400,000 public routes and found that Snowdon bags the top spot for most routes created.
We broke the country down into square kilometres and counted the number of routes passing through each square, and while Snowdon topped this list, the Edale area of the Peak District grabbed 6 of the top 10 spots, with the Lake District taking the remaining places.
Our Flying Unit has been immortalised by the iconic Squadron Prints who produce the highly acclaimed series of aircraft and ship lithographic prints. One of the Cessna 404 Titan’s we use, G-FIFA, features on the stunning print.
Our Flying Unit operate from East Midlands Airport, taking to the skies above Great Britain between February and November each year. Professional pilots take our air camera operators up in two Cessna 404s, G-FIFA and G-TASK, to take aerial imagery of over 50,000 square kilometres of the country each season. From the Scilly Isles to the Shetland Islands, the team will capture over 140,000 aerial images each year, using the 196-megapixel cameras on-board the planes.
Congratulations to Miranda Sharp, Head of our Smart Cities Practice, who was recently appointed to the Smart London Board. The advisory panel is responsible for shaping the vision and strategy for London’s smart cities agenda and investment in data infrastructure. It will advise the Mayor on implementation of new digital technologies aimed at the highest level of performance across London’s infrastructure, utilities and public services.
As a Board Member, Miranda will be able to advise on how location technology and data can be used to support mayoral strategies and policies ensure the best outcomes for Londoners and for the whole country.
National Allotment Week kicked off yesterday, celebrating the hard work that volunteers, councils and organisations put in on all of the sites across the country. To mark the week, allotment groups are opening their gates and holding barbecues, plant and produce sales, allotment tours, competitions and exhibitions, coffee mornings and afternoon teas – many of them raising funds to support local charities.
Allotments are a fantastic way to #GetOutside and enjoy some fresh air, meet new people, and grow your own fruit and vegetables. The National Allotment Society say that 30 minutes of gardening on your allotment can burn around 150 calories, the same as doing low impact aerobics. Plus, allotments provide essential habitats for wildlife. Just 1 square metre of land can support hundreds of different species.
In our OS Open Greenspace map covering Great Britain, there are 12,107 allotments and community growing spaces, measuring up 135 km2 of land. That breaks down into:
Did you know that our Partner A-Z Maps is also the official mapping partner for the National Trails of England and Wales? They reproduce our 1:25,000 data (as used in our own OS Explorer maps) to cover the 16 long distance paths that are official National Trails. Ideal if you have a long distance summer adventure planned!
Their A-Z Adventure Series is in a convenient book format with an index to places of interest, towns, villages and features. Their books cover nearly all the 15 National Trails, and they’re aiming to complete the set by autumn 2017. Latest releases include the Norfolk Coast Path and the Yorkshire Wolds Way.
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.