Ordnance Survey (OS)

Ordnance Survey is the national mapping agency of Great Britain and one of the world's leading providers of geographic information. It is responsible for creating and updating the definitive map of England, Scotland, and Wales, from which it produces and markets a wide range of digital information and paper maps for business, leisure, educational, and administrative use. More than 5,000 updates are made to this master map every day, reflecting dynamic landscape change.

Ordnance Survey traces its origins back to 1791, when a decision was taken to map the south coast of England to prepare for any possible invasion from Napoleonic France. The first published Ordnance Survey map was of the county of Kent and dates from 1801. The organization is now a wholly civilian government department and executive agency. Since 1999, it has operated as a trading fund, with [Page 335]responsibility for its own finances and planning under a business plan approved by ministers. Ordnance Survey licenses its geographic information and uses the receipts to offset operating costs and fund continuous investment in improved data quality. It also pays a dividend to government based on financial performance.

Geographic information from Ordnance Survey is pervasive in crucial public sector activities, from the registration and transfer of land and property titles to locating suitable derelict sites for house building; from identifying areas of deprivation to planning new access to the countryside; and from controlling the flow of urban traffic to helping the police monitor crime patterns and catch offenders.

In the private sector, the uses are perhaps even wider, ranging from customer profiling to calculating insurance premiums and from managing property portfolios to developing transport logistics systems. Ordnance Survey data are an integral component of Web directories, in-car navigation systems, and mobile phone applications—virtually any product or service that relies on location in Great Britain.

Links with an ever-growing number of commercial partners—software companies, systems integrators, consultancies, and publishers—have made Ordnance Survey one of Europe's biggest onward licensors of geographic information. Licensed partners play a vital role in delivering the benefits as they use their expertise to add value, producing the best available products and services for particular applications.

In fact, so vital is Ordnance Survey's geographic information to both the public and private sectors that independent estimates put its annual value to the British economy at more than £100 billion.

Ordnance Survey is developing a new generation of highly detailed and intelligent digital data, OS MasterMap®, based on one of the world's biggest and most advanced geographic reference frameworks. OS MasterMap® is available in a series of themes and layers—Topography, Addressing, Imagery, and Integrated Transport Network™—for any area or activity defined by the customer. OS MasterMap includes more than a half-billion unique feature identifiers and is designed to be managed as a fully integrated database, offering real benefits to customers through cost and efficiency savings and improved decision-making capabilities.