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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
Night time aerial imagery of London Waterloo and the London Eye
We recently made available, through the Digimap Lidar Collection, a wealth of Vertical Aerial Imagery data captured by the Environment Agency for England. The Environment Agency has been capturing vertical aerial imagery since 2006 on a project by project basis, so the coverage is not continuous across England. Availability grids for each year of data are available in the Lidar Download application. Data is available in some locations for multiple dates where the location has been surveyed on more than one occasion.
Some of the imagery was captured at night time giving an insight in to the effects of urban light pollution.
Data format
The data is supplied in the raster ECW (enhance compressed wavelet) format, which should be readable by most modern GIS and image processing software. The data is tiled and tile sizes range from 1km x 1km to 5km x 5km and the resolution of the data ranges from 10cm to 50cm. There are three types of imagery available:
True colour – red, green, blue (RGB)
Near Infra-Red (NIR)
4-band (RGBN)
RGBN aerial imagery of Spurn Head in Humberside
Access
Lidar download is available to all institutions that subscribe to Aerial Digimap, meaning that subscribing institutions now have access to another detailed aerial imagery dataset.
For information on subscribing to Aerial Digimap, please see the subscription page.
If you have any questions about the new data or Digimap please contact us:
On a recent visit to the University of Exeter the Digimap team learned of their regular Mapathon sessions. Dr Damien Mansell from the University of Exeter’s Department of Geography has kindly written a short piece about their mapathons for this blog:
The second week of November was an important one for Geographers and Geography departments around the world. Not only was it Open Street Map Geography Awareness Weekbut on the 15th of November it was also GIS day. Both initiatives are international forums to develop interest and understanding of the subject, the technology of Geographical Information Systems, showcase applications, raise public awareness of the significance of place and encourage collaborative mapping. To celebrate, the University of Exeter Geography department hosted a Missing Maps Mapathon. The mapathon collaborates with British Red Cross and Humanitarian Open Street Map Team to map an area where humanitarian organisations are trying to meet the needs of vulnerable people. This mapathon was mapping the Kurigram District in Bangladesh in order to effectively implement disaster risk reduction activities, to enhance resilience to future floods. During the 2 hour mapathon which included wine and pizza, The University of Exeter volunteers managed to make 2,272 map edits which included 2,035 buildings and 1,134 km of roads. The humanitarian aid projects continues at Exeter and we encourage you to host a mapathon for yourselves! http://www.missingmaps.org/host/
Images copyright Dr Damien Mansell/University of Exeter
On 30th November 2017, we released Beta versions of our new Roam mapping application for all Digimap Collections. Log in to Digimap and click on each Collection to find the link to each new Roam:
The functionality of the new application remains the same, but we hope you agree that the updated look is easier to use.
Most importantly, BOTH versions of Roam (new and old) will run in parallel for an extended period of time to give users the opportunity to get used to the new interface. We will review this at the beginning of March 2018 with a view to establishing a date for withdrawal of the old application.
New Aerial Roam showing the London Eye
Known Issues
All applications have undergone thorough testing, but there are still a few issues that we working on, for example some elements can be slow using Internet Explorer. If you spot anything that is not behaving correctly, please report this to us.
We encourage you to try the new beta versions and we welcome any feedback you have.
On 3rd October 2017, we released a Beta version of a new Roam mapping client for Digimap’s Ordnance Survey Collection. OS Roam – Beta is available next to the existing version, simply log in to the Digimap service and select Ordnance Survey Collection to view the new beta version:
Whilst the functionality remains the same, we hope you agree that the look and feel of the interface is more modern. The majority of functions are available from a new menu panel down the left hand side, which is hidden by default, maximising the area available for the main map element.
There are some issues we are aware of in this version, which we are working on, for example, some elements can be slow using Internet Explorer and Edge.
New versions of the Roam applications in all other collections will be available in due course. Both new and old versions will run side by side for an extended period of time to give users the opportunity to get used to the new interface.
We would encourage you to try the beta version and we welcome any feedback you have.
We are pleased to announce a new webinar series for Digimap over the coming months. These short sessions are free to attend and are available to any Digimap user, whether staff, student or researcher. You will need to register to attend each webinar. Bookings will open a couple of weeks before each webinar is scheduled. The majority of the webinars will be recorded and made available via our Digimap YouTube channel for those who were unable to attend.
We recently helped out the very talented Alasdair Rae from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of Sheffield with some research on the buildings of Great Britain. Here is his blog post which is a great work of GIS sleuthery: Buildings of Great Britain
As mentioned in his post we assisted Alasdair by backing up the figures he created using Ordnance Survey’s OpenMap – Local dataset with information from the more authoritative OS MasterMap data.
So what did we find out? First of all, we had to measure how big OS MasterMap says Great Britain is and instantly we hit an issue, tides. It was quite tricky trying to unpick what is and isn’t covered when the tide comes in from the OS MasterMap classifications. After a bit of data wrangling we came up with the fascinating factoid that Britain shrinks and grows by 3454 Km2 twice a day!
With this settled, we could then move on to figuring out how much of each of the home nations was covered by buildings (at high tide!). We found 42.5 million objects in OS MasterMap classified as buildings, which we then had to measure and divide up into England, Scotland and Wales. Note that we were just working out the area covered by buildings, not paved areas or roads etc. EDINA has the OS MasterMap data held in a PostgreSQL database with PostGIS installed for spatial analysis like this. Despite the database’s very large size the queries came back relatively quickly from our server, and showed that Alasdair’s figures were very close. The figures based on OS MasterMap were slightly higher and we think that although generalisation tends to enlarge the building polygons, the inclusion of thousands of smaller buildings omitted from OpenMap – Local accounted for a larger amount.
England – 2635.87 Km2
Scotland – 316.15 Km2
Wales – 195.67 Km2
To give some sense of what these values look like we put them into another infographic for you:
Thanks again to Alasdair Rae for letting us collaborate on his research and for raising such interesting questions we can ask of the data. Thanks also to Ordnance Survey for creating all this data in the first place so we can find these things out!
One last interesting fact that came out of the research was that Great Britain has 22.75 Km2 of glass houses, that’s the same as 3155 football pitches!
As mentioned at Geoforum earlier this year, we’re currently working hard on a new version of Digimap Roam. The new-look application will bring Digimap Roam, the online mapping tool in the Digimap family, bang up to date with the latest web technologies available. Whilst the functionality will remain the same, the look and feel of the interface will be more modern. The majority of functions will be available from a new menu panel down the left hand side which is hidden by default maximising the area available for the main map element. By utilising the latest technologies we will be able to add new functionality and make further enhancements to the application in the future.
The new interface makes further improvements to the experience on mobile devices, an area where we’re seeing an increase in usage across the service. A mock up of how the new Geology Roam interface might look is included below to give you an idea of the proposed layout and styling:
Mockup of the new Geology Roam interface
Currently we are on target to launch the new interface early in the first semester of the 2017-2018 academic year, but we will post progress updates on this blog as the new interface approaches completion. There will be a phased release with the new Roam applications with the Ordnance Survey Collection being first in line.
We appreciate that you may have teaching or lecture materials that may require updating as a result of this change in interface, so we will run all the existing Roam applications alongside the new versions so you can get up to speed with the new interface whilst the existing versions are still available. At the moment we anticipate running both versions in each Collection side by side until at least the end of the year. During this period we would welcome any comments and feedback that you may have.
As ever, if you have any questions about the new Roam, please do not hesitate to contact us.
This year’s GeoForum, held in the Geological Society of London on the 22nd of June, was a very successful event for all those who attended. Academics and support staff from subscribing institutions got to meet representatives from the Digimap team and experts from our data suppliers and the wider geospatial community.
In the morning session we heard from John Murray who explained some of the complexities involved in using Lidar data for extracting meaningful information to address real world scenarios. The Lidar data used by John is now available through the Digimap Lidar Collection, which is the latest collection to be added to the service. This collection makes data available from the Environment Agency, Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and Natural Resources Wales (NRW) easily downloadable through the easy to use Data Download application.
Following John was an informative and engaging presentation by Clare Rowland from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) who produce the Land-Cover Map datasets. Clare was heavily involved in the production of the latest version of the Land-Cover Map (LCM 2015) which is now available to view and print in Environment Roam and to download via Environment Download. Clare highlighted some interesting uses for the data including analysis of how land cover changes are affecting the numbers of bees.
The final presentation of the morning was a round up from EDINA’s Emma Diffley covering the achievements in the last 12 months and the plans for improvements to the service in the next 12 months. Of particular note were the introduction of two new collections: Aerial Digimap, launched in October 2016, and Lidar Digimap, launched in June 2017. The major work being undertaken by the team at the moment is a rewrite of all Roam clients to bring them up to date with the latest technology available, which will give them all a more modern look and feel whilst retaining all the existing functionality.
There was a great chance to network over lunch, when we also got to see William Smith’s pioneering Geological Map of Britain.
In the afternoon we held a feedback session where all the delegates had their chance to let us know how they feel Digimap is performing and what else they would like to see included in the service. This was then followed by a presentation and demonstration by EDINA’s Ian Holmes on how to use the Data from Digimap in various software packages to create 3D models. He showed us Ordnance Survey data GetMapping Aerial Imagery and some of the Environment Agency’s Lidar data in ArcGIS Pro, QGIS with the QGIS2Threejs plugin, and AutoDESK Infraworks.
The Presentations
John Murray: We have the Technology… We have the data… What next?
GeoForum included a workshop involving all participants on how EDINA runs the Digimap Service. We asked participants what they would like us to add or improve in terms of the data, service and support we provide.
Data
The main theme that came out of this discussion was that there is a great demand for overseas data, both global datasets and national data for other countries. Datasets such as OpenStreetMap and some of the global satellite data are now part of our long-term investment plans for Digimap.
There were also calls for Ordnance Survey’s AddressBase data. We have enquired about this particular dataset with Ordnance Survey before and the sticking point is the joint intellectual property rights with third party organisations. We will keep up the pressure and do our best to make this data available.
Service
The common theme running through most of the service enhancement requests was to be more joined up. Improvements would come by making maps, tools and data more interoperable between collections, improving the ability to analyse all the data that individual users are licensed to use. Other features highlighted come more under the banner of personalisation, allowing users to customise their experience more, or to share maps they have created with other Digimap users.
Support
There was broad consensus that the support we provide for Digimap is excellent, with the content and the broad range of support channels proving very useful. There was most appetite for more webinars and video tutorials which we are committed to expanding in the coming academic year. We also had requests for more marketing materials and detailed usage figures for Site Reps so that they could better support and promote Digimap.
Closing Remarks
Finally EDINA’s new director Janet Roberts closed the day with a strong message about improving the Digimap service for the academic community and the importance of feedback sessions to help guide this process. Janet also reiterated the University of Edinburgh’s commitment to the Digimap service and making further developments beyond the core offering to better meet the sector’s needs.
We feel that the day was a complete success and we learned a lot from the delegates, particularly in the feedback session. With the great presentations we know that the delegates got something from the day too. We see the feedback session as good start in a process whereby we can engage as many users of Digimap to help us continually improve the service specifically for Higher Education.
We have now reached the end of the Lidar Digimap Preview. We hope that everyone who has used the service has found it a great way to access the Lidar data available. From now on the service will continue to be available to Digimap Users whose institution subscribes to the Aerial Digimap service.
Lidar Point Cloud Forth Rail Bridge. Crown copyright Scottish Government, SEPA and Scottish Water (2012).
Despite the addition of Lidar Digimap, Aerial Digimap subscription prices will not be increased for the 17/18 academic year. We will also be looking to add further datasets to Lidar Digimap over the next 12 months, these include:
Additional Point Cloud datasets ideal for use in CAD software for creating 3D models like this one of the Forth Rail Bridge
Photography; aerial images captured at the same time as the Lidar data
We’d also like to thank the hundreds of people who took the time to fill in our user feedback survey on Lidar Digimap, we have seen a huge range of uses for the data across a very broad range of disciplines. This feedback exercise has been very successful and we will be making the draw to see who has won the Amazon vouchers very soon. Keep watching the blog for the announcement in the coming weeks.
If you would like any more information about the Lidar or Aerial Digimap collections or details on how to subscribe then please do not hesitate to contact us:
Today we have made a huge amount of archived Land-Line data available to download from Digimap. You access the data through the Data Download application in the Digimap: Ordnance Survey Collection. Land-Line was the pre-cursor to the OS MasterMap Topography Layer, and was the most detailed topographic mapping available from Ordnance Survey at the time. The archive released consists of annual snapshots of the whole of Great Britain from 1999 to 2006. This data will be vital for researchers who are undertaking longitudinal studies, examining how areas have changed over time.
Land-Line.Plus showing Edinburgh’s Quartermile area from 1999OS MasterMap showing Edinburgh’s Quartermile area from 2017
The data can be found in the Withdrawn Datasets category in the Data Download interface and is currently available in its original tiles and format.
Land-Line comes on 500m, 1km and 5km tiles depending on whether the area is Urban, Rural or Moorland. It is supplied in National Transfer Format (NTF) which was the standard format of the time. We have put together a short help page that explains how to import this data in to common GIS and CAD applications which may be of use for anyone unfamiliar with this format of data.
IMPORTANT: Between 2001 and 2006 Ordnance Survey carried it’s Positional Accuracy Improvement (PAI) programme. This means that there will be discrepancies in the positions of features on these maps and the OS MasterMap data: Read more on PAI
The Land-Line data that we have made available significantly bolsters the amount of detailed topographic data that is available for download from Digimap. The most detailed topographic mapping currently available from Digimap, OS MasterMap Topography Layer, is available for download going back to 2007. The addition of Land-Line data to Digimap means that users now have access to download the most detailed topographic mapping data for Great Britain going back a further eight years to 1999.
We hope you find this new addition of recent historic data useful, if you have any questions about the data please contact us:
This year’s GeoForum, held in the Geological Society of London on the 22nd of June, was a very successful event for all those who attended. Academics and support staff from subscribing institutions got to meet representatives from the Digimap team and experts from our data suppliers and the wider geospatial community.
