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Digimap is an online map and data delivery service, available by subscription to UK Higher and Further Education establishments. Operated by EDINA at the University of Edinburgh, Digimap offers a number of data collections, including Ordnance Survey, historical, geological, aerial photography, LiDAR, marine maps, land cover mapping, global mapping and census data. For more information about Digimap go to our website: https://digimap.edina.ac.uk Background image Contains OS data (c) Crown Copyright and database right 2022
A new MasterMap data layer is available to download that allows you to add an extra level of information to your maps. The Sites Layer shows boundaries for features such as schools, hospitals and other government property. The dataset currently contains the extents of over 40,000 important locations in Great Britain broken down in to seven themes, with more to be added in the future:
MasterMap Sites Layer includes access points, such as pedestrian gates and driveways, and routing points allowing the data to be fully integrated with other OS products including MasterMap Topography Layer and MasterMap Integrated Transport Network (ITN) layer. Sites Layer can be used for informed decision-making and spatial analysis, enabling users to answer questions such as: ‘how much of this health centre is at risk of flooding?’.
Ordnance Survey have published clear instructions on how to import the data, which is supplied in GML3 format, into common GIS packages in their Sites Layer Getting Started Guide.
If you have any questions about Sites Layer or Digimap please contact us:
We are pleased to announce that users can now download OS MasterMap Building Height Attribute data in file geodatabase format. The data consists of building polygons together with the building height attributes supplied by OS in the latest alpha release of their Building Height Attribute dataset (December 2014 at the time of writing).
This makes the process of visualising the data in 3D much simpler for the majority of GIS users. The file geodatabase format can be read by both QGIS and ArcGIS, including the new ArcGIS Pro, without the need for any complex data processing. Making the data available in file geodatabase format removes the need for users to download building features from OS MasterMap Topography Layer and then use the JOIN function in GIS to connect the Building Height Attribute data to the buildings.
The data is supplied on a 5x5km grid, so you may receive multiple separate geodatabases if your area covers multiple 5km grid cells, however it is easy to merge the datasets together using common GIS functions.
We hope this makes it much easier to use the data but we welcome any feedback you may have.
We have added the Feature Information tool to Environment Roam. This allows you to select points on the map to identify what the land use is at that location. Some of the colours used on the maps are very similar, which, while necessary with so many different categories, makes the maps more difficult to interpret. When the opacity slider is used to see the base map through the colours there can be even less distinction. The feature information tool helps to overcome this difficulty. The tool is also vital for those with a colour vision deficiency,
To identify the land use category for a particular point, click on the i button in the bar above the map:
You will notice there is now a little question mark next to your mouse pointer, now click on a location to identify the land use at that point. A small red pin will appear on the map along with a box containing the information about the location clicked on:
This feature has been a part of the Historic, Geology and Marine Roam interfaces for some time. However, it took much longer to develop this tool for Environment Roam because the data is very different. Rather than querying a database about the location we use colour matching technology to find the corresponding legend entry for the location clicked on. For this reason, we can’t operate the Feature Information tool on the 1930s Dudley Stamp maps. These maps were hand coloured, often by different people using different equipment, therefore the digital versions of the colours are inconsistent. Since the Dudley Stamp maps have fewer land use categories there is less confusion in identifying the appropriate colours in the legend, but we recognise that there may still be difficulties for those with colour vision deficiency.
We have moved the Dudley Stamp Land Use Survey maps from the Historic Digimap Collection to their more natural home in Environment Roam. In doing so we have increased their usability. You can now pan and zoom much more easily and can print and annotate the maps, something that was not available in the previous Land Use Map Viewer.
Two scales of map are available for all of England, Scotland and Wales: 1:625,000 and 1:63,360.
Environment Roam automatically switches between these at the appropriate point when zooming in or out of the map.
To view the 1930s maps go to the Basemaps selector on the right hand side of Environment Roam and choose Dudley Stamp 1930s from the drop down window.
Ordnance Survey’s most detailed open data product, Open Map – Local, is now available to download from the Digimap service along with the OS Open Names gazetteer, OS Open Rivers water network and OS Open Roads road network. There are no restrictions on what the data can be used for, it just needs to carry a simple copyright acknowledgement:
This is a vector dataset best viewed at a scale of 1:10,000, with layers including buildings, roads, sites, railways, hydrology, coastline, woodland and cartographic text. The data comes in Shapefile format for easy access in the most commonly used GIS software.
The data isn’t quite as feature rich as the licensed VectorMap Local data, though it does contain some nice additions such as the ability to highlight public buildings and their grounds.
OS Open Names
This is a gazetteer with 2.5 million entries, made up of over 870,000 named and numbered roads, nearly 44,000 settlements and over 1.6 million postcodes. This dataset is billed as the comprehensive list of Great Britain’s place names, road names and numbers and postcodes, and is certainly the most detailed gazetteer in Digimap. The data is available in CSV or GML formats.
OS Open Rivers
This is a generalised network view of the rivers of Great Britain. The data is designed to give its users a high-level view of where the water flows across the land surface. Though it doesn’t show the detail of the actual width or shape of the river as the topographic data it is a proper network. This means it doesn’t get interrupted by bridges or other features that prevent the topographic data from being used to “route” water through the river network. The data is available in Shapefile and GML formats.
OS Open Roads
Like OS Open Rivers this is a generalised network of roads. Topographic data will provide more detail about the road dimensions and real world position, however this data provides an uninterrupted network for road routing analysis. The data is available in Shapefile and GML formats.
Ordnance Survey will withdraw two products in 2016, the 1:10 000 Raster data and the Land-Form PROFILE data. To remind you that these products will no longer be available from the Digimap service we are putting them in a new category in Data Download. The Withdrawn category will contain these datasets until we have to remove them from the site, March 2016 for the 1:10 000 Scale Raster and September 2016 for the Land-Form PROFILE contours and DTM.
Remember that the VectorMap Local Raster data is a more detailed generally better product to use than the 1:10 000 scale raster. If you really need the cartography of the old version, you can create a print map from Digimap Roam which styles the VectorMap Local data to look like the 1:10 000 Scale Raster. Just zoom in to the Street or Neighbourhood view levels and then use the Basemaps button at the top left of the map to change to the VML Raster 10k styling. An added advantage to doing this is that you can add in contour lines which were never available with the old data.
The Land-Form Profile data has also been superseded, you should now use the OS Terrain 5 data instead. Although it is not available in DXF format, Terrain 5 is a much improved dataset compared to the older data and it is still available in the following formats: GML, Shapefile (for the contours) and ASCII (for the DTM).
If you have any questions about the withdrawal of these datasets then please let us know:
As blogged about last month, we have been working on a new Digimap registration system which will be released next Wednesday (28th January) The current registration system has been in place for over ten years. It has served us well, but it is now rather dated especially because users have to wait for their registration to be manually approved and processed overnight. The new registration system allows users to get instant access to Digimap. This will be a significant improvement and help those students that leave their Digimap coursework a bit late! At least now they will be able to get access quickly and easily (unfortunately we can’t guarantee they’ll get the work submitted on time though!) Detailed help pages will be available from Wednesday, once the release has been completed and Digimap is available to users. To help prepare site reps and support staff for the change, here is an overview of the registration process. Registering with Digimap Registration will now be an automated two-step process. Users will supply their details to register and then they must activate access to collections by agreeing to the individual licences. After logging into Digimap to start, users will be presented with the registration form to enter their name, email address, department, status and where they heard about Digimap. After hitting the submit button, users will be sent an email with a link to verify their account. Once they have successfully verified, they will be directed back to the Digimap homepage, where they then complete the next step of activating collection access. Agreeing to licence for Digimap collections (activating access)After verifying their email address, users will need to agree to the licences for each of the specific Digimap collections that they wish to use, this is done through the licence agreements page. Users will only be able to agree to licences for the collections that their institution subscribes to. Once the user has agreed to the licence(s) and hit the confirm button, they will have access to those Digimap collections. If the process is completed in one go, it takes no more than a few minutes. Much quicker than the current system! Existing users Existing users will not notice any change unless they have not been active in a collection for more than 12 months. Access to a collection expires after 12 months of inactivity. If that’s the case, they will be prompted to accept the licence when they try to access an application in that collection. Generally though, if someone has not accessed a particular collection for more than 12 months, we don’t expect they will activate access and therefore will not notice any change with the new system. Access to active collections will carry on as normal. If you have any questions or comments, please contact the EDINA Helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk
We are introducing a new registration system in January (26th to the 28th) and would like to give advance warning of the service disruption this is will cause.
New users will not be able to register for Digimap from 4pm on 26th January
All Digimap services will be unavailable all day on 27th January
Normal service will resume on 28th January
New registrations for Digimap, using the current system, will be closed from 4pm Monday 26th January to ensure that no registrations are lost during the changeover. All Digimap services will then be unavailable all day on Tuesday 27th January, while we put the new system in place. Once all the work is complete the service will be available again hopefully by midday on Wednesday 28th January.
We apologise for the inconvenience caused but due to the significant changes required to release the new system we must close access to Digimap during this time. We urge you to create any maps or download data that you may need during the period of service unavailability in advance.
The new registration system will allow users to register and instantly access Digimap Collections via email verification speeding up access for new users significantly. We hope that this will help make up for the fact that new users will be prevented from registering during the maintenance. Existing registered and active users will not notice any change once normal service has been resumed.
If you have any questions or concerns please contact us:
Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
Phone: 0131 650 3302
More details about how the new system looks and works will be posted on the Digimap blog in the New Year.
The new Ordnance Survey Licence includes some new and very interesting datasets for the Digimap service. We have already added OS Terrain 5, Ordnance Survey’s most detailed digital terrain model and contour data to the the Data Download facility. The other new datasets will require some additional effort to add into the service but we should have them available to download early in the new year. These new datasets are as follows:
OS MasterMap ITN Urban Paths
Routing information for walkers and cyclists in towns and cities.
Identifies areas as being in categories such as schools, hospitals, transport facilities etc. The data also highlights access points to the sites and routing destinations for more accurate travel distances.
Over 4 million points of interest classified into 3 tiers; 9 groups, 52 categories and 616 classes. The points of interest include accommodation, eating and drinking, commercial services, attractions, sport and entertainment, education and health, public infrastructure, manufacturing and production,retail, and transport.
Please note that Points of Interest data is made available under slightly different terms to the other Digimap Ordnance Survey datasets. Please see the EULA and FAQs for further details.
EDINA has had many requests for these datasets, especially the Urban Paths so we are very pleased to be able to offer them to you. We also intend adding some of these datasets to Digimap Roam so that they can be added to the maps you view and print as well.
Please contact the EDINA help desk if you want access to the datasets mentioned above before they are made available in the Data Download service:
We are pleased to announce that a new Ordnance Survey licence agreement for Digimap is now available.
The new End User Licence Agreement (EULA) can be viewed in the Digimap Help Pages. As part of the new licence arrangements, end users need to agree to the EULA to access the Ordnance Survey data through the Digimap Service. Initially this will need to be done every time you access the collection via a popup after you select an application, however we are working on a new registration system that will mean you only need to do this once.
There is also an updated list of FAQs for the licence.
However, if you have any questions relating to the licence please do not hesitate to contact the Digimap support team.
Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
Phone: 0131 650 3302
What’s changed in the new agreement?
See below for key changes. Supplementary information is available from the EULA, the Ordnance Survey website and the EDINA helpdesk.
1. The following new products have been introduced to the Digimap Ordnance Survey collection under the new licence:
OS MasterMap® Integrated Transport Network Layer™ (ITN) Layer Urban Paths Theme.
OS MasterMap® Topography Layer will also contain the Sites Layer.
OS Terrain® 5, introduced as the new high resolution height dataset, replacing Land-Form PROFILE®.
PointX Points of Interest (PoI).
These will be made available through the Digimap service as soon as possible.
2. Changes to image publication size restrictions for external use
Image publication size restrictions have changed significantly with many being removed. Please refer to the Your Obligation/Restrictions section of the EULA, specifically Clause 5.1.4 and 5.2.
3. Public sector data sharing rights
In certain situations, it is now possible for you to share Digimap Ordnance Survey data with government departments and for government departments to share their Ordnance Survey data with you. For further details please see FAQs 27 & 28 in Licence FAQ section and consult the EULA Clause 4.
4. Authorised Data Handler
Where a Digimap Authorised User needs to use Ordnance Survey data in a secure data service, the new Digimap Licence now permits that via a separate Digimap Data Handler Agreement. Please see EULA Clause 3.1.4.
5. Educational navigation product/service
For Educational Use, you are now permitted to build Educational navigation apps. See the EULA, Clause 3.4 for the scope of what is permitted.
6. Use of YouTube and Twitter
You may now publish Ordnance Survey data, in line with strict terms detailed in EULA Clause 5, on YouTube and Twitter.
7. There is a change in the copyright notice that must be included on any maps
You must include the following acknowledgements on any display or reproduction of the Ordnance Survey Licensed data:
Where the date to be inserted should be the current year.
For HE institutions:
If you are responsible for your HE institution subscribing to Digimap Ordnance Survey Collection you should already have received an email from Jisc Collections detailing how your institution can agree to the new Sub-Licence. Full details can be found on the Jisc Collections website.
If you have any further questions then please contact the Digimap Support team:
