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Home , Cartography

CARTOGRAPHY AND THE INFORMATION ECONOMY

Lawrence, V.

Director General and Chief Executive, Ordnance . E-champion for geographic information. Advisor to the British Government on geographic information.

The face of the geographical information (GI) industry and its applications are evolving as rapidly as the landscape itself. makes 5000 changes a day to the master of Great Britain, reflecting the dynamic landscape changes that happen across the country.

Ordnance Survey was established 212 years ago at a time of great turbulence in . Fearing a French invasion led by Napoleon, the British Government instructed that a survey be undertaken so that an accurate map of Kent could be created, as this was the most vulnerable county on the south coast of England. This momentous decision eventually led to the whole country being mapped.

Today, we are an independent Government department employing 1700 staff across the country to continue the vital work begun two centuries ago. We collect our principally at two scales – 1:1250 for urban areas and 1:2500 in rural areas – although some mapping of remote mountain and moorland areas is surveyed at 1:10 000 . We guarantee that significant change occurring on the ground, such as new buildings, will be included in our within six months in urban areas and within three years in rural areas. However, in many cases changes are featured well ahead of these periods, as we incorporate updates to our main database every night and large-scale mapping data is made available to customers immediately.

In April 1999 we became a Trading Fund, giving us more commercial flexibility, a greater responsibility for our finances and a commitment to making a profit, all while remaining in the public sector. The annual revenue turnover of Ordnance Survey grows each year and is now in excess of £100 million. The brand of Ordnance Survey is renowned for quality paper mapping used by virtually everyone in Great Britain – we sell in the of 4 million each year and countless tens of millions are currently in circulation. But despite this being an important part of our business, it is an ever-decreasing percentage of our overall turnover with 75% of our revenue now coming from digital sales and only 25% from paper mapping.

But in both the digital and paper mapping disciplines, cartography is a fundamental tool for communicating geographical reality, and its importance is too often overlooked in the digital age. Driven by significant technological development and increasing customer demand, cartography has been through a tremendous revolution during the 1990s, leading to the current being celebrated here this week. Let there be no doubt: today cartography is as crucial to Ordnance Survey, to National Mapping Organisations and to the wider GI community as it was 50 years ago.

As Great Britain’s national mapping organisation, it is vital that Ordnance Survey positions itself at the forefront of the fast-paced information economy we are all operating within, both in our outlook and the products and services we offer. The industry is one of intense global competition, with higher than ever customer needs and expectations determining the development of new services and innovations. Ordnance Survey is already a significant force in this e-volution; our data has been independently estimated to currently underpin around £100 billion of British economic activity in the public and private sectors every year. This is a substantial and, to many, a surprising figure – but one that we intend to build on even further as we drive forward our plans to develop as an e-business.

With an estimated 80% of British information containing a spatial content, Ordnance Survey and the master map of Great Britain provide the underpinning framework of the country to enable both public and private sector information to be linked together and analysed quickly and easily. The existence of this crucial framework, the creation of intelligent data, and the growth of GI and the is not only facilitating the more effective development of public policy and delivery of public services but is also stimulating many new applications in the private sector.

To ensure national coverage is properly maintained, a proportion of our work is carried out in the national interest at cost, under the National Interest Mapping Services Agreement (NIMSA) with Government. This that we undertake some specific and mapping activities that are vital to the national interest but cannot be justified on purely commercial grounds.

Proceedings of the 21st International Cartographic Conference (ICC) Durban, South , 10 – 16 August 2003 ‘Cartographic Renaissance’ Hosted by The International Cartographic Association (ICA) ISBN: 0-958-46093-0 Produced by: Document Transformation Technologies Like any country we have areas of the land where interest in acquiring detailed mapping is low, except in times of emergency and significant incidents. This agreement ensures that even the most remote areas are mapped in great detail and are updated on a regular basis – a task that is vital for public administration as well as in situations such as the recent foot and mouth outbreak that swept across the British countryside.

By the same token, our popular paper maps are produced first and foremost to meet customers’ needs rather than for financial profit. The first choice for millions of walkers, cyclists and motorists, Ordnance Survey’s paper are a reflection of our commitment to map every square metre of Great Britain, no matter whether the demand for a particular map comes from one or one thousand people. If our 1:50,000 Landranger series were to be produced on a purely commercial basis for example, it would only offer 40% national coverage, as any further coverage would not prove financially viable. That would not be acceptable.

At Ordnance Survey, we have progressed from our role as the established authority for paper mapping products to meeting the needs of business, Government and the public in the digital age. We started converting our large-scale mapping archive to computer form in 1973 in order to streamline our map production process. It was a huge task, but by 1995 the last of our 230,000 maps had been digitised. The digitising and quality assurance of Great Britain’s national topographic database was an enormous undertaking spearheaded by the cartographers and was viewed by some as the demise of cartography at Ordnance Survey. In fact, it was the work of such individuals that paved the way to Britain becoming the first country in the to complete a national large-scale database.

We have recently been on the pioneering trail again in the production of OS MasterMap, the most definitive and accurate digital map of Great Britain ever created. Offering a consistent and maintained base for referencing geographic information, it is a complete reference system for Britain’s geographical data, comprising the National Grid, detailed topographic mapping, imagery, address data, integrated transport network information, height data, models, and – perhaps most significantly – over 400 million unique reference numbers called TOIDs specifically identifying all features. This enables the joining up of disparate datasets held within the public and private sector in Great Britain and improves the communication of information between businesses.

The technologies cartographers use today to visualise the database are significantly different to those used 10 years ago, and the devices on which their work is visualised are new and constantly developing. Who, for example, could have imagined a decade ago that it would be possible to visualise customised colour maps on a mobile telephone in real time, and have up-to-the-minute information on traffic conditions, hotel vacancies or a host of other information linked to the map extract in view? That is exactly what is happening now – and the work of cartographers in ensuring the clear visualisation of such electronic data is a key skill. The role of cartographers in ensuring GI can be viewed, interpreted and manipulated effectively therefore remains central to our business.

Indeed, this is where the challenge to all cartographers now lies: to translate their valuable knowledge and skills to new and developing technologies. OS MasterMap can be ordered online, with change-only updates saving customers time and effort allowing users to choose only the specific information they need. Yet this is only the beginning of our vision, with future releases planned to provide a 24*7 supply, additional layers of information and enhanced services through portals and customised web sites. The internet, data hosting, portals, and location-based 3G services to mobile phones and PDAs are the tip of the iceberg in terms of the technologies to which our cartographers are adapting their working practices. It is essential that consideration is given to style, resolution, scale, band width, hardware, software, and end- user devices if products are to be created which meet ever-increasing customer demands. From an Ordnance Survey cartographer we now see creativity and business sense, forward thinking and technological understanding, customer focus and innovation. This truly is Cartographic Renaissance.

From a complete data set of roads in Great Britain to the location of every addressable household in the country, OS MasterMap leads the way in the GI revolution supporting vital public services; crime prevention, land management, transport planning, urban regeneration and many aspects of analysis and planning all rely on a sound geographical base. Data in OS MasterMap is polygonised to represent real world features, with inferred links to create a more realistic image, but the success of OS MasterMap lies in the combination of the quality of the cartography from which it was created and the data collected and maintained in the database. Each feature’s unique 16-digit TOID allows the sharing and association of data through this common link. The nine themes of data are provided in unclipped and seamless in Mark-up Language (GML) format - the new international standard for storing and transporting geographical data developed by the Open GIS consortium.

Crucially, OS MasterMap is based on the principles of the Digital National Framework (DNF) - a conceptual framework to enable information industry users to more effectively and efficiently realise the benefits of Geographic Information. In Great Britain, DNF is the and standards that underpin the way we envisage the seamless integration of geographical information resources and upon which OS MasterMap is built and operated. Herein provides an additional set of challenges for the future of both cartography and geographic information. As the value of data increases through the bringing together of disparate datasets, more attention must be given to the standards to which data conforms. For Ordnance Survey, this has led to the choice of the OGC standard - GML. This drives to the heart of database configuration and product generation. It is dependent on ever-improving the quality of techniques in order to feed local data into national datasets, and national data into global datasets.

It is through the principles of DNF that we are creating new, derived products from the national topographic database. Currently, our existing mid and small-scales data products are 'stand-alone', being generated from individual production datasets with differing production techniques and systems employed. Now the potential of OS MasterMap as the 'raw material', combined with new map simplification and generalisation tools, offers the opportunity to radically improve derived data production, based on the 'capture once, use many times' principle. Cartographic skills working together with IT system designers are central in the creation of the automated processes. Fully automated map generalisation remains the long-term goal but the main emphasis for us at present is on the production of a new generation of 1:25 000 scale digital data.

Urban Rural Current mapping

Derived data

Figure 1. A comparison between current 1:25 000 data and equivalent generalised, derived data in a rural and urban area.

The introduction of automated derived data processes will significantly drive down production costs whilst providing the opportunity to produce better products tailed for more specific customer needs. OS MasterMap will be a consistent, multi-resolution and multi-scale product family, all derived from the same national geospatial database.

At Ordnance Survey, we do not stand alone in our vision to become the provider of choice for location-based information in the new information economy. Integral to realising our vision are our partners, who take our core data and build on it to create innovative, added-value products, offering the results to the wider market. As a data provider, Ordnance Survey has decided not compete in the applications market, other than for products needed in the national interest such as our core paper map ranges headed by the 1:50 000 scale Landranger and 1:25 000 Explorer series. Our new partner programme gives the opportunity for closer working in ways that bring mutual benefit to all parties. A developer programme for individuals or companies whose ideas are at the conceptual stage offers an inexpensive 12- month contract and access to substantial amounts of data for development into potential applications. This can lead to becoming a fully-fledged partner if appropriate. It is often the case that cartographic input is required in the development of added-value products, whether the end result is a digital or graphic offering. We are well on the way to realising our vision. Whilst our paper maps remain hugely popular, our digital products now generate about three-quarters of our sales income. With revolutionary technological advancements such as OS MasterMap and the growing use of geographical information in both the public and private sectors, Ordnance Survey’s data is being used in more ways than ever before. From improving emergency service response times to planning pipeline networks; enabling precision marketing to analysing environmental trends; locating the nearest pizza restaurant to setting insurance premiums, GI is increasingly at the heart of business and leisure.

As Ordnance Survey becomes a true e-business, investment in digital products will not be at the expense of our traditional paper maps, as both have an equally important role in shaping how information is shared. Technological advances have broadened the way in which paper mapping can be accessed and delivered, not merely as ‘off the shelf’ products. Examples of this include the ‘Get-a-Map’ facility on our web site, where extracts of mapping can be printed out for free; and the development of OS Select, providing full-size small-scales map sheets site-centred on points determined by each user. We also offer online delivery of customised large-scale mapping as data or printed plots through the OS Options retail network and – as a new service – are establishing dedicated web browsers for customers so they can access customised mapping on their own desktops. These are further enhancements to our web strategy which sees the development of web technology and web services to deliver data online to our customers and partners.

In recognition that the art of cartography is the key to unlocking the powerful tool of digital data, our Cartographic Strategy sees Ordnance Survey as a world leader in the production and communication of GI, satisfying partner and customer needs alike while continuing to improve the maintenance, development and exploitation of Ordnance Survey through innovative design and presentation for existing and emerging technologies. By focussing on performance, systems, data and people, Ordnance Survey is encouraging the Renaissance in the world of cartography in order to produce first class products to satisfy the demanding requirements of customers in the information economy.