OSNI Data Withdrawn on 31 July 2020

EDINA have taken the difficult decision to withdraw the Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland (OSNI) data from Digimap at the end of the current subscription year on 31st July 2020.  For those who have had a subscription to the OSNI data and have downloaded any licensed OSNI data from Digimap over the past 12 months you must now delete it since your licence to use and hold it has expired.

If you wish to continue using OSNI data, you should make appropriate licensing arrangements with OSNI directly, or through one of their partners.

Some OSNI data is available as Open Data. This will continue to be available through Digimap as previously. The Open Data is not covered by the recently expired Digimap licence for the OSNI data.

Introducing Noteable….for geospatial analysis and processing

You may have noticed a new tab has appeared on the Digimap home page, labelled Noteable.

Noteable is a new service from EDINA, a cloud-based service which allows users to create, run & visualise code in a large number of computational languages. It can be used to access the unlimited opportunities of Python and/or R to build and manipulate data science models, addressing a wide variety of research problems. Noteable offers huge potential for geospatial data analysis and processing, making complex software environments and data models readily available to large numbers of students for remote learning.

Noteable builds and expands on Jupyter & RStudio technology to provide an efficient and collaborative learning environment. It offers low barriers to access with teachers able to set up the students’ environment once, and enables students to get started without the associated effort of setting up their own.

Contact us to learn more: noteable@ed.ac.uk

Provisional progamme for GeoForum 2020 – Register now

Our next GeoForum 2020 will be held on Tuesday 3rd March 2020 at the Informatics Forum, University of Edinburgh, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB

Places are limited so please book early to avoid disappointment.

Our provisional programme is as follows and may be subject to change:

  • 10.30 Registration and coffee
  • Welcome – EDINA
  • Dr Jonathan Olsen, Institute of Health and Wellbeing, University of Glasgow
    • ‘Natural space and mental health in primary school aged children: Classification of natural space using the OS MasterMap Topography Layer’
  • Laurence Watson, UCL
    • ‘Identifying solar panels from overhead imagery’
  • Dr Mike Spencer, SRUC
    • ‘Mapping access to services to estimate community resilience’
  • Lunch – including demo of Noteable
  • Kimon Krenz, Research Associate at the Urban Dynamics Lab, UCL
    • ‘From mapping demolished buildings to estimating urban productivity: Applications of large scale spatial data in urban analytics.’
  • Dr Genevieve Patenaude, Deputy Director of Research, School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh
  • Coffee
  • EDINA Workshop on New Data Options
  • Summary and questions
  • 16:00 Close

This year we are also delighted to invite you to a pre-GeoForum event, a private guided tour of the Da Vinci Exhibition, currently on display at The Queen’s Gallery in the Palace of Holyroodhouse.  This will take place from 6-8pm on Monday 2nd March. You can book your place for the private tour here.

Geoforum is a free all day event aimed at lecturers, researchers and support staff who promote and support the use of geospatial data and services at their institution.

Happy Birthday Digimap!

Friday 10th January sees Digimap reach the grand old age of 20!  There are still a few EDINA staff who remember the exciting day we launched the national service after 3 years of pilots and projects.  Our initial data licence was for 4 years and we have gone from strength to strength since then, expanding both the range of data offered and the tools that interact with it. We anticipated 40 subscriptions within the first year; we had 70 within the first month!

Digimap was born in the early days of web based mapping and we are delighted that we are able to continue to develop and grow the service to keep up with changing times, and that it continues to help and support an enormous range of research and teaching across all discplines and at all levels. Roll on the next 20 years!

Indulge us…..here is an image of the second version of Digimap Classic – the precursor to Roam.

New Data in Digimap OS Collection

We are very pleased to announce the addition of a new collection of datasets to Digimap’s Ordnance Survey Collection.  EDINA has partnered with Improvement Service to bring you a range of 37 datasets from Scottish Local Authorities. These are available at no additional charge upon agreement to the institutional sub-licence.

Image showing location of Improvement Service data in OS Data Download facility

Once your institution has agreed to the sub-licence, all users will need to agree to the end user licence to have access to the data via the OS Data Download facility. To agree to the licence, log in to Digimap, go to Licence Agreements (top right) and find the Improvement Service licence at the bottom of the list. Once you have agreed to this, the data will be visible.

To access it, go to the left hand panel in Data Download and look for the section labelled “Improvement Service – Scotland”. All 37 datasets are listed in this section.

Although the availability grid indicates Scotland-wide coverage for every dataset, some local authorities do not provide every datasets.

The datasets are:

Air Quality Management Areas Alcohol Prohibition Areas Car Parking
Community Council Boundaries Conservation Areas and Article 4 Directions Contaminated Land (Confirmed)
Core Paths Council/Community Asset Register Culverts
Cycling Network Employment Land Supply Green Belts
Gritting Routes Historic Environment Records Housing Land Supply
Libraries Local Landscape Areas Local Nature Conservation Sites
Local Nature Reserves Planning Applications Polling Districts
Polling Places Private Water Supplies Recycling and Waste Facilities
Renewable Energy Sites Safety Features School Catchments
Scottish Local Authority Areas Septic Tanks Smoke Control Areas
Street Furniture Town Centres Tree Preservation Orders
Vacant and Derelict Land Wind Turbine Spatial Framework

GeoForum 2020

We are very pleased to confirm a new date and venue for our next Geoforum event and invite you to join us for an interesting programme with a range of speakers and opportunities for discussion.

Geoforum will be on Tuesday 3rd March 2020 at the Informatics Forum, University of Edinburgh 10.30am – 4pm.

Please do save the date.  We aim to showcase different uses of the data downloaded from Digimap by researchers from a number of disciplines.  There will also be a workshop session led by EDINA offering opportunity for discussion and feedback. We look forward to seeing you!

Geoforum is a free all day event aimed at lecturers, researchers and support staff who promote and support the use of geospatial data and services at their institution. The confirmed programme will be published here on our blog and distributed by email when available.

 

GeoForum Postponed

Following the announcement of the general election for Thursday 12th December we have taken the difficult decision to postpone the GeoForum, due to be held in Edinburgh on Thursday 12th December.

We are aiming to reschedule the event for the spring of 2020 so will post details of a new date here as soon as possible.

GeoForum is a free all day event aimed at lecturers, researchers and support staff who promote and support the use of geospatial data and services at their institution. We hope that you will be able to join us for the next one.

GeoForum 2019 Again! – Save The Date

**UPDATE** This event has been postponed until Spring 2020. Watch this space for further details

 

We are very pleased to confirm the date and venue for our next Geoforum event and invite you to join us for an interesting programme, with a range of speakers and opportunities for discussion.

Geoforum will be on Thursday 12th December 2019 at the Bayes Centre, University of Edinburgh 10.30am – 4pm.

Please do save the date.  We aim to showcase different uses of the data downloaded from Digimap by researchers from a number of disciplines. Topics include green space and mental health, satellite data and solar energy. There will also be a workshop session led by EDINA offering opportunity for discussion and feedback. We look forward to seeing you!

Geoforum is a free all day event aimed at lecturers, researchers and support staff who promote and support the use of geospatial data and services at their institution. The confirmed programme will be published on our blog and distributed by email when available.

 

Digimap for Colleges to be withdrawn 31 December 2019

For those people in FE colleges using our Digimap for Colleges service, the following will be important. Digimap for Colleges is available to Further Education Colleges only.

From 31st December 2019 Digimap for Colleges will be no longer be available.

Access to the same maps (and substantially more) continues to be provided through our comprehensive Digimap service. You can learn more about this service here.

Subscriptions to Digimap are available at any time from now onwards and prices are available on our website. Note that these prices are for a full annual subscription and will be pro-rated from the date your subscription starts.  If you would like to purchase a subscription for your institution, please contact us at edina@ed.ac.uk.

At EDINA we aim to create resources which are aligned with the needs of our subscribers. Furthermore, we are dedicated to providing access to the very best digital tools, helping learners in the FE sector to gain valuable skills that prepare them for employment. Continual investment in the staff and infrastructure that underpin our services is a necessity and this impacts the sustainability of free-to-use resources. As a consequence, operating and maintaining a free Digimap for Colleges service is no longer viable for us. However, the well-established and well-respected Digimap service provides a more flexible, powerful and comprehensive tool offering significant value and benefits.

Please do not hesitate to contact Guy Stevenson with any questions you may have.

Environment Digimap: Pesticides and Fertiliser data now available

We are pleased to announce that two new data products from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology are now available to download through Environment Digimap.

By combining information on cropping patterns from CEH Land Cover® plus: Crops (a dataset also available through Environment Digimap) with national survey data on pesticide and fertiliser use, the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology has created two new data products: CEH Land Cover®plus Fertilisers and CEH Land Cover® plus Pesticides.

More detailed information about the creation of these two products can be found on the CEH website: https://www.ceh.ac.uk/services/ceh-land-cover-plus-products-fertilisers-pesticides

Map image of fertiliser data for England
CEH Land Cover plus: Fertilisers dataset for England

CEH Land Cover®plus Fertilisers dataset covers England only.  CEH Land Cover® plus Pesticides covers England and Wales. Both datasets are available to download from Environment Download.

If your institution does not yet have a subscription to Environment Digimap, you can register your interest in this collection on the Environment Digimap home page once you have logged in.

Register your interest in Environment Digimap