e-Enabling the Nation’s Data
Ed Parsons
Chief Technology Officer

Who is Ordnance
Survey ?

Great Britain's national
mapping agency

An information provider...
• Creates & updates a national
database of geographical
information
• £ 50m ($90m) investment by
2007 in ongoing improvements
• National positioning services
• Advisor to UK Government on
Geographical Information
• Highly skilled specialised staff of
1500

Information, problem solving
• Powering location based services
• Directing emergency services
• Making Education fun !
• Guiding the weekend explorer !\"
!
• Linking central & local government depts

Information, delivered
where it’s needed
• Close relationships with industry partners,
universities and other national mapping
agencies
• Service level agreements provide universal
!\"
!\"
access to Central Government, Local
Government and Utility companies
• Information increasing delivered online
!\" !!

The modern Ordnance Survey
• Ordnance Survey is solely funded through the
licensing of information products and services
• Unrivalled infrastructure to maintain accuracy,
currency and delivery of geographic information
!\" !
• 52% of trading revenue is from the private sector
• 2003-4 Profit of £ 6.6m on a turnover of £116m
($196m)
!\" !\"

e-enabled
The Internal view

Atoms not bits..

The end of the 1st
generation
• Home built for single
use
• CAD file structures
• Limited attribution
• Legacy hardware/
software platforms

The next generation..
• The Business wish-list...
• “End to End” process supported by a single
integrated information system
• Data Management
• Workflow Management
• Business rules / logic
• Separate data from representation
• Enterprise wide

The next generation..
• The CTO’s headache !
• Seamless integration
• Unified data management
• Long transaction management
• Structured data versioning
• Robust geoprocessing
• Flexible application development
• COTS based !

Building the next
generation..

Flowline reversal
1980-2000
2000+

postal addresses in Great Britain.
The Address Layer originates from Royal Mail's PAF. Ordnance Survey matches PAF addre
location and represents this by coordinate values. When the address can be matched to a
Information, not just a map
reference between the building and the address is created.
!
Figure 1.5.1 Example of the Address Layer used with the Topography Layer
Information about part of a RoadLink specific to a given direction of travel
RRI features that apply to a specific direction of travel along to a portion of a single RoadLink are captured as
PartialRoadRouteInformation features.
An example could be an access restriction such as a bus lane in one direction only or a one-way street that applies to a
portion of a RoadLink feature.
The start and finish points along the RoadLink feature are supplied as both National Grid coordinates and the distance
along the RoadLink feature from its start point.
rea feature life cycle rules
Relationships between ITN (Roads) features
The flowchart below shows the process followed whenever a real-world object represented as an OS MasterMap area
feature appears, changes or is removed from the landscape. The rules are described in more detail in the following
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sections, especially the guidelines we use to answer the question in the centre ,$&%'!-%(.!/0)1%&23
of the flowchart.
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Creation of area features due to real-world change
!
When a new real-world object represented as an area feature – such as a pond, a building or a land parcel – comes
into being, a new area feature is created in the data, with a new TOID and a version number. Users with local holdings !
!
of OS MasterMap data will be informed of new features in their holding via change-only data update.
!
!
!
Deletion of area features due to real-world change
\"#!$%&'()$%*!+&()!,+-.(/!*)0.+1'!&*(1-2-1%'-03!14%*'()!567!!!!!!!!!!v869!:!5;<;99=!>!?)0@3!10*A)-,4'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!B%,(!C9!

All products derived
PS Editor
Geospatial
National
Object
Field Product
Store
Editor Adopters
GeoSpatial
Database
GIS
Application

What does a
£500,000 computer
look like ?

e-enabled
The Customer view

2005 and all that..

Product delivery today ..

Product delivery today ..

Future supply use cases
OGC WMS service Browser based, no local data
OS OS
Database Publishing Server
OGC WFS service Desktop, local user data only
OGC WFS(T) service Server based, local OS & user
data

e-enabled
The future customer view

Internet change part 2
The
customer
controls the
technology

The napster effect
• Users expect to ...
• buy piece by piece
• try before buying
• build DIY solutions
• Reshape and repurpose

Sample data

2000 napster

2004 iTunes Store

Conclusion
The customer
demands the
technology
from us....

When is
cyberspace...
WARNING
You are about to view the first
every viral marketing
campaign to be developed by
a department of Her Majesties
Government.
Welcome to the edge...

Thank you..
Ordnance Survey
Romsey Road
SOUTHAMPTON
United Kingdom
SO16 4GU
Phone +44 (0)23 8030 5311
Fax +44 (0)23 8079 2078
Mobile +44 (0)7879 435991
Ed Parsons ed.parsons@ordnancesurvey.co.uk
Chief Technology Officer www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk
slides available from
www.edparsons.com