Collecting data since the first industrial revolution and now fueling the fourth

The National Geographic Database, maintained by Ordnance Survey (OS), and containing the location of fixed physical objects in Great Britain, has exceeded 500 million unique man-made and natural features. The data, which includes attributions such as routing and surface type, is said to be worth ￡100 billion to the national economy. It is used daily at all levels of national and local government, by the emergency services and large and small businesses. Each day millions of us are exposed to the data through various Internet mapping providers, satellite navigation systems, telco systems, home delivery and mobile apps.

At just over 2 petabytes, OS’s database is the largest geospatial database for a single country in the world, and if you counted all the bits at one bit per second it would take around 570 million years. OS began compiling the database (owned by The Crown) in 1791 when mapping coastal areas most vulnerable to French invasion. The digitisation of OS data began in 1971 and was completed in 1995.  

To keep the data fresh and relevant for OS products and services and its many partners and customers, OS employs a team of 270 surveyors on the ground, two aircraft and further aerial support from external flying companies, all of whom each day are recording Great Britain as it changes. As a result of this surveying activity across the 243,241 square kilometres of Great Britain, OS adds to its database each week the intricate detail of an area the size of Basingstoke. 

OS has a range of business models which stretch from a single Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA) with up to 5000 individual government organisations able to pull down, share and use OS data freely, to a freemium model that allows individual and corporate developers to experiment with its data. In 2010 OS introduced its open business model, and the success of OS’s OpenData, downloaded well over one million times, has been a large factor in Great Britain being recognised as a world leader in making data freely available.  

Having collected data since the Industrial Revolution, charting the development of Great Britain, OS’s expertise and experience is now in demand around the world, as foreign governments and national mapping agencies have begun to acknowledge various independent research cases that show the GDP of countries with a geospatial database increases by 0.2 - 0.6% per annum. Ordnance Survey International (OSI) was established in 2012, and is currently operating on four continents, deploying best of breed technical solutions and establishing itself as an internationally-recognised thought leader within the global geospatial community. 

At home OS is exploring how its data can help make Britain a smarter nation - the fourth industrial revolution (or Industry 4.0). Working with a variety of partners, OS is involved in a number of experimental and proof of concept Smart City, Internet of Things and Autonomous vehicle projects.