CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR (GB)

Lilley, R. J.

Ordnance Survey of Great Britain.

ABSTRACT

The theme of ‘Cartographic Renaissance’ struck a resonant chord with cartographers at Ordnance Survey (GB), Great Britain’s National Mapping Agency. Over the past decade or so traditional drafting skills have been overtaken by technology but, at the same time as investment in digital data and GIS became the focus, we overlooked the key role cartography plays in effectively visualising that data and allowed the erosion of cartography as a vocation. Cartographers at Ordnance Survey withdrew into themselves, becoming insular and to a degree isolated within the organisation. The recent gradual demise of UK cartographic academia suggests that this is a problem not confined to Ordnance Survey.

However, the renaissance has begun. The very technologies that challenged the need for cartography are offering huge opportunities for cartographers to stake their claim in playing a vital role in today’s business and leisure activities. In this information age when geographic data is increasingly being manipulated and displayed using a variety of different media by inexperienced hands, it is no longer good enough for cartographers to scoff privately at the quality of mapping being presented in some quarters. We must find ways in which we can work with users in all walks of life and demonstrate high quality cartography as a fundamental aid to communicating geographical reality. This is today’s challenge to cartography.

An independent report in 1999 suggested that £100 billion of economic activity in Great Britain was underpinned by Ordnance Survey map data. If we were to assume this level of dependency on geographic information across many regions of the globe it is not difficult to imagine the high costs associated with misleading or confusing users through poorly designed or map data.

At Ordnance Survey a revitalised cartography is a necessity if we are to place ourselves in the best position to meet the growing challenges of more demanding customers, the emergence of new technologies for geospatial data, and the opportunities provided by our new Digital National Framework (DNF) which includes continuous, seamless, object- based mapping of the whole of Great Britain. The cartographers will be key to delivering our products through a wide variety of media and ensuring the quality of Ordnance Survey data presentation expected by our customers. To succeed however is not simply to gain recognition; our cartographers are having to change. We are adapting our training to enable our cartographers to be more innovative in meeting the product opportunities arising from new technologies and we are investing in workplace technology that will drive down cost and provide greater flexibility in output. A prime example is the DNF that is allowing us to develop semi-automated production methods for our derived mapping.

The future is now looking bright for cartography at Ordnance Survey but only if we fully embrace and engage with the emerging technologies as the next stage in our evolution.

1. BACKGROUND TO ORDNANCE SURVEY (GB)

Ordnance Survey has been Great Britain’s national mapping agency for over 200 years. We are an independent Government Department which became a public sector Trading Fund in 1999 giving us more commercial flexibility than we previously enjoyed but also greater responsibility for our finances and a commitment to making a profit. A government review of Ordnance Survey’s status during 2002 confirmed the current position as the most appropriate for the immediate future.

Although commercial focus has increased significantly in recent years, profit is not our primary driver. Some of our work is undertaken at cost under contract from government where it is deemed to be in the national interest but, by itself, could not be commercially justified. This ensures that every square metre of the country is mapped in detail, regularly updated and readily available for customers or for administration in times of emergency such as the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001.

Proceedings of the 21st International Cartographic Conference (ICC) Durban, South Africa, 10 – 16 August 2003 ‘Cartographic Renaissance’ Hosted by The International Cartographic Association (ICA) ISBN: 0-958-46093-0 Produced by: Document Transformation Technologies Our products range from traditional printed maps, aimed primarily at the consumer, to data products such as OS MasterMap for the business user. All our products ultimately rely on the capture of geographic data through air and ground survey and, depending upon the topography, nominally mapped at 1:1250 for urban areas, 1:2500 for rural areas, and 1:10 000 for mountain and moorland parts of the country. In 1995 the last of this large-scale mapping archive, comprising some 230 000 maps, was successfully digitised to make Britain the first country in the world to complete such a detailed database. Tools now allow the database to be accessed by surveyors from wherever they are working in the country, to be updated with the latest ground changes, and made available to our data customers the following day. We expect to make around 5 000 changes to the database every day.

Figure 1. Examples of OS MasterMap.

Our derived national paper map series such as OS Explorer and OS Landranger have to achieve a profit across the series but are produced primarily to meet the nation’s need for accurate, definitive and current maps which are available for the whole country and to a consistent specification. As an example, although the 204 maps in the OS Landranger series together make a profit, only 40% of them are profitable in their own right.

2. CARTOGRAPHY AT ORDNANCE SURVEY DURING THE LAST DECADE

The 1990’s was a period of significant decline for cartography at Ordnance Survey. The traditional drafting skills were being overtaken by technology, the attention of senior management and the focus for investment was on digital data and GIS. Instead of grasping the new technologies, cartographers withdrew and became insular, failing to promote cartography as the language to be employed in visualising or communicating geographic data. So instead of playing a key role in the developing technology, they effectively withdrew into a world of derived mapping that appeared to be the last bastion for traditional skills and seemingly far removed from the inexorable march of digital data that was clearly to become the cornerstone of Ordnance Survey’s strategy for the future.

It is unclear why this happened. It may have been a fear of technology or a misconception that cartography was about production methodologies rather than communication; cartographers at Ordnance Survey had traditionally restricted their involvement to map production leaving considerations such as product portfolio development and customer contact to the Marketing branch of the organisation. Whatever it was, it reinforced a view amongst some that cartographers were stuck in a paper map time warp; a legacy of another day; from a time before commercialism when we made maps for our own convenience rather than customers. Cartography ceased to be a respected vocation at Ordnance Survey!

There were investments in derived mapping during this period but no cohesive strategy bound them together. A vector database for 1:250 000 mapping was developed, individual 1:25 000 and 1:50 000 raster datasets were produced by scanning reprographic material used during production processes and each were subsequently used for maintaining the series. These initiatives introduced significant production savings and formed the raw material of production systems that have supported very successful mapping series, but still the cartographers felt, and were, sidelined from mainstream Ordnance Survey. With technology promising automation who needs cartographers? Figure 2.

3. THE PICTURE ACROSS GREAT BRITAIN

The decline in cartographic courses in Great Britain would suggest that the problems in cartography were not confined to Ordnance Survey. Map publishing continued to be strong but in the emerging technologies, which grew apace in the business world during the 1990’s, cartographers were conspicuous by their absence. There is no doubt that a lot was happening in cartography but it tended to be within the walls of academia and not directly influencing those shaping a new world of visualising geographic information. These new technologies gave the opportunity for anyone developing a solution based on geographic data to play the cartographers’ role – with varying success. We have all seen numerous examples of what we consider to be poor cartography on the internet or other emerging media and mocked the attempts of amateurs without considering the impact to the end user or the slight on cartography. There have been accusations aimed at our profession of ‘fiddling while Rome burns’, of being self-congratulatory in its chase for cartographic excellence for our own delights but with only tenuous links to the harsh business world of the map or map data user.

An independent report in 1999 (1) estimated that £100 billion of economic activity in Great Britain was underpinned by Ordnance Survey data. If we were to assume this level of dependency on geographic information across many regions of the globe it is not difficult to imagine the high costs associated with misleading or confusing users through poorly designed maps or data visualisation.

It is the accelerating development of those very technologies that appeared to challenge the need for cartography in Ordnance Survey that are offering huge opportunities for cartographers to stake a claim to playing a vital role in today’s information age. It is no longer good enough for us to privately scoff at the quality of mapping being displayed on some of the new technologies, we must find ways in which we can grab the attention of those developing and introducing technologies using geographic information and demonstrate high quality cartography as a fundamental element to communicating geographical reality. This is the challenge to cartography at Ordnance Survey – and probably further afield.

4. THE RENAISSANCE

The British Cartographic Society (BCS) portrays the strapline, “Promoting the art and science of mapmaking”, but it would be the first to admit that it is not sure to whom. The Society, most likely as the majority of others, tends to be a home for enthusiasts preaching to the converted with very little direct impact on mapping users. However, it is now embarking on a strategy that includes raising its profile in the geographic information (GI) community and improving awareness of cartography in general. It is essential for cartography in GB and for the Society itself that the strategy is successful.

The cartographic renaissance has also begun at Ordnance Survey. A key driver to the revival has been the development of our Digital National Framework (DNF) (2) which offers a consistent and maintained methodology for referencing geographic information across the whole of Great Britain. It is realised in our National Geospatial Database (NGD) comprising height data, terrain models, imagery, and detailed topographic information that is now polygonized to represent actual features and with inferred links to create a more real world image.

To maximise the benefits of the NGD, cartography needed to raise its profile and become more proactive within the organisation. In much the same way as the BCS will now be lobbying the Geographic Industry in Great Britain, cartographers had to persuade Ordnance Survey’s top management that a revitalised cartography was essential to successfully communicating in graphic form the complexities of our data to suit the needs of our customers. As well as their traditional role of producing and maintaining the current series mapping, our cartographers should be: ! innovative in designing our future graphic products ! working with customers and advising on the future product portfolio ! involved in the content design of any database with potential for visualisation ! developing expertise in data visualisation using any media ! consultants to our customers using our data and their own associated data to ensure best visualisation ! working with partners in the development of future technologies such as the provision of location based mapping.

This view received strong support from our board of Directors and we developed a cartographic strategy for Ordnance Survey that strongly supported the organisation’s vision and business plans. We are still in the first year of implementing the strategy but signs of improvement are strong. Three key themes run through the strategy; People, Processes, and Performance.

The People element of the strategy focuses on extending the cartographers influence in Ordnance Survey and their skills, particularly in design. Ordnance Survey graphic products have evolved over decades and have developed a brand image, almost a watermark, in that any paper map we produce is easily recognisable as one of our products. That, in itself, can have a very positive marketing value but tended to put our cartographic design skills into tramlines that are difficult to step out of when seeking innovation - and innovation is what we’re looking for to maximise potential of the new technologies. Traditional cartographic training courses in GB did not meet our criteria for refreshing our staff’s skills and we felt we had to go back to basics to achieve the results we were aiming for. Amongst others, we have used traditional and creative thinking courses with very little reference to mapping at all.

The influence of the cartographers has considerably increased within the organisation, raising the profile of cartography and improving morale significantly. In particular, we have built an excellent working relationship with the Marketing department, directly involving ourselves in technical market research for the first time and supporting them in events such as The Outdoor Show, a new annual exhibition of outdoor pursuits sponsored by Ordnance Survey and voted best new show by the events industry. At the show cartographers worked alongside sales and marketing staff promoting our products and meeting customers who were overwhelming in their enthusiasm to share ideas with the people responsible for producing the products that many of them can be extraordinarily passionate about.

The Process element of the strategy fits within a much broader strategy for Ordnance Survey which will lead us to replacing the current corporate data infrastructure and continue to improve and integrate our data holdings. As well as maintaining our commitment to provide high quality national paper mapping series we are aiming to continuously improve our data profile and offer our partners, through our new partner programme (3), and GI users affordable but flexible products and services that provide them with the data solutions they need. It is to meet this aim that our cartographers will need to become increasingly involved in the database content design and to bring to bear new design skills around data visualisation.

We are developing production flowlines that incorporate data directly from the NGD and maximise the use of advances in automated generalisation. This development work is under the umbrella of a derived data strategy which supports the aim of creating all our derived products directly from a single database. Earlier experiments to derive smaller scale products from the detailed national database had very limited success. The lack of data structure in the database at that time required high manual intervention, and therefore high costs, for deriving anything of a scale smaller than 1:10 000. The DNF provided the opportunity to realise the enormous potential that structured data could offer us and our partners in terms of production efficiencies and product variation, particularly in the emerging internet, mobile applications and location based services.

The Performance element of the strategy aims to ensure we accrue the minimum costs to Ordnance Survey. As a cartographic production unit we naturally seek the step changes that technology such as the NGD can bring but we are also employing the tools of lean manufacturing to drive a culture of continuous improvement and reducing cost. We have a programme of production process reviews and are identifying partners with whom we can share best practices or possibly undertake benchmarking exercises. Commercial sensitivities would not allow these partners to be drawn from the cartographic industry but from industries with similar operations or aims such as publishing houses or large design offices.

Overall the strategy provides a path for cartography at Ordnance Survey to maximise its contribution to the organisations’ success through developing a centre for cartographic excellence and continuing to drive down costs to support high quality, but affordable, geographic information needed by our customers. 5. MARKET DEVELOPMENTS

The map market in Great Britain is showing signs of stagnation and the battle is on to maintain market share or stimulate the market through innovation in our product portfolio and through changes to our distribution channels to improve accessibility. We have historically focused on the book trade as our principal means of placing our paper maps in the market-place but we our now trialling alternative high street outlets to reach a wider audience. In addition to these traditional methods of distributing paper mapping we have developed a new service on our web-site that allows customers to order their own site-centred map of anywhere in the country utilising our current 1:25 000 and 1:50 000 raster datasets. Implementation of the derived data strategy will significantly increase opportunities for improving these services and the introduction of many others. These initiatives are driven by an e-strategy for Ordnance Survey that was agreed with the Government in 2001 and was only one of a few that achieved the Governments’ highest approval rating.

Ordnance Survey small-scale mapping, despite its excellent reputation for quality, has received criticism from some users for being too complex; attempting to be the map for every occasion. To help rectify that we have re-branded our series mapping so that the 1:25 000 OS Explorer series is aimed at the outdoor activist; the 1:50 000 OS Landranger is aimed at planning a family day out; and the 1:250 000 and 1:625 000 road maps clearly for travel and route planning. However, some quarters of the British population have a well developed map phobia and remain reluctant to use maps in any form for their recreation. In an attempt to target this group we introduced the Touring map to the travel brand; produced at a scale of 1:100 000 it is simplified and derived from the smaller scale 1:250 000 database. The British press had great fun with this after someone suggested that women would find map reading simpler with this product and turned it into a “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” style gender debate. I’m not sure if some of the coverage could seriously influence the ICA Commission on Gender and Cartography but it was good publicity for us!

6. IMPLEMENTING THE DERIVED DATA STRATEGY

Our smaller scale derived products actually begin with a 1:10 000 cartographic vector database that is already maintained directly from the large-scales database but was developed during pre-DNF days and is ripe for further development to fully utilise the benefits of the latest technology. However, for Phase 1 of implementing the Derived Data Strategy, we chose to build a 1:25 000 database directly from NGD as it represents the largest of our derived scales where we first begin to see the problems of generalisation emerge. Lessons learnt and techniques generated will be applied to 1:10 000 and 1:50 000 during the next phases of the project.

Derivation of new production processes for 1:25 000 scale data coincided with the decision to focus the Explorer series on the outdoor activist, giving us the opportunity to rethink the map specification to take full advantage of production efficiencies that could be gained from the new technologies. This was always going to be a very delicate exercise on a map series that was awarded Product of the Year at the inaugural Go Outdoor Awards. The accolade was based exclusively on voting by specialist outdoor retailers and organised by Go Outdoors, the Outdoor Industries Association. However, we believed that we could improve the map further in favour of the targeted market and during production trials we developed a specification that we could take to our customers for consultation and trials. Overall the new specification has been well received but some quite discreet changes have created a furore. Despite now being a commercial organisation it is amazing how Ordnance Survey mapping within Great Britain has become almost an institution in itself. Some of the lobbying and debate over individual specification changes have been extraordinarily passionate.

Key specification changes include: ! reduced generalisation meaning detail being shown in true position, only being moved where features clashing could misinform the user ! reducing the impact of urban areas by using different colours and removing garden / back fences ! improved depiction of paths and tracks ! greater use of symbology

We plan to begin full production of the new flowline in August 2003 employing some automated routines to derive elements of the map data and promising significant production savings. A key selling point for the Explorer is that it is the only national series in Great Britain that shows the entire Rights Of Way (ROW) network, tracing routes that the public have a right to walk. Although not always clearly visible on the ground, the depiction of these routes has to be particularly accurate in their relationship with other features as they can be potentially very sensitive where they cross privately owned land or even hazardous in some situations. The complexity of the data derived directly from such a large scale source at times necessitates our cartographers to use their experience and expertise to clarify situations where the automated process fails to accurately reflect real world relationships between ROW and associated features. Figure 3.

Fully automated map generalisation tools remain our long term goal but the technology is still very much in its infancy today and we have had to be practical in accepting a semi-automated system requiring manual intervention from cartographers as an integral part of the production process. The systems employed are designed to allow further upgrades to the process to be integrated as they become available.

The next step will be to develop an automated flowline for 1:10 000 derived mapping and our expectations of producing an (almost) fully automated flowline are very high.

7. THE FUTURE

Cartography at Ordnance Survey is looking brighter than for a very long time. However, we cannot rest on our laurels, having raised our profile we have also raised the organisations’ expectations of us and we have to deliver. We are continuing to implement the strategy but amending it to reflect the ever changing business drivers.

The single most important action we must take is to embrace the new technologies and their innovators and developers. They are not a threat to cartography but merely the next stage in its evolution and we have to be fully involved, ensuring that geographic data is presented in a graphical language that the user can most effectively receive and understand.

8. REFERENCES

[1] The Economic Contribution of Ordnance Survey GB, Oxford Economic Research Associates (OXERA) Ltd, 1999 [2] K. Murray, The Digital National Framework – Joined-up to Underpin Data Sharing and Decision Making, Proc. 21st International Cartographic Conference, 2003 [3] V. Lawrence, Cartography and the Information Economy, Proc. 21st International Cartographic Conference, 2003