Any views expressed within media held on this service are those of the contributors, should not be taken as approved or endorsed by the University, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the University in respect of any particular issue.
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
These annotation tools are a first phase, to see what you find the most useful. We would like to hear from you about any changes or additions you would like making to the tools. Please send feedback to our help desk:
EDINA is running Digimap training at Birmingham City University on Thursday 19th May 2011. Training is free and available to support staff, teaching staff and site representatives. This course will cover an introduction to all Digimap’s collections, including mapping facilities and downloading data for Historic, Geology and Marine Digimap as well as the Ordnance Survey Collection.
The MasterMap data in Digimap’s MasterMap Download has undergone its April update; the new data has a currency date of January 12th 2011. The data is available to download for new orders, re-orders of previous data, and as a Change-only Update (CoU) which provides only the changes to the data since it was downloaded.
CoU and Re-orders can be accessed from the Your Account page in MasterMap Download; simply select the order you want to refresh and use the CoU or Re-order (current data) buttons below the order list.
Please note that the OS MasterMap raster data (Tiff files) in Digimap’s Data Download are only updated once a year in September. You can read about these maps in a previous blog post here: MasterMap Background Maps
VectorMap District Beta Release
VectorMap District data has now been updated from the alpha release to beta in Data Download. You can read about the differences in a previous blog post here: VectorMap District beta release
The currency dates for all the different data products in Digimap’s Ordnance Survey Collection can be found on the following help page: Dates of Updates to Digimap
Digimap Roam has new measurement tools that allow you to easily check the distance between two or more points and find out the area of a polygon you draw on the map.
Click on the icon above the map to activate the tools. Select Distance or Area then start clicking on the map to define your line or polygon; use a double click to finish.
The new measurement tools in Digimap Roam
New Local Plus View:
Digimap Roam has also got a new zoom level to go with the measurement tools, bringing the total to 13. The view, called Local Plus, is a more zoomed out view of the 1:50,000 colour raster maps found in the Local view. The image above uses this new view as well as the measurement tools.
The Local Plus view prints at 1:40,000 compared to 1:20,000 for the Local view.
Mozilla have just released their latest web browser: Firefox version 4.
EDINA is aware that while the majority of functionality within Digimap will work with Firefox 4, you may find that you need to restart the Roam mapping services, and sometimes their print facilities, to get them to work properly. The problem is due to the underlying software we use to make maps not yet being compatible with Firefox 4; usually after reloading everything works smoothly.
Please bear with us while we make the necessary updates to ensure that Digimap is fully compatible with Firefox 4. If you cannot get any aspect of the service working properly then please contact the help desk: edina@ed.ac.uk
Ordnance Survey have recently release the next version (the beta version) of their VectorMap District product. This dataset is part of the OS OpenData package.
EDINA will be updating the version of VectorMap District available through both Digimap’s OS Collection and Digimap OpenStream. The current (alpha) version will be withdrawn completely.
There is some processing work to be done on VectorMap District before it can be available through EDINA’s services. With this in mind, we aim to release the new version through Digimap’s Data Download facility on Tuesday 5th April and through Digimap OpenStream by Thursday 31st March.
OS MasterMap data is now available to download in a rasterised (image) format from Digimap’s Data Download facility. If you need an image of OS MasterMap data (for example, as a backdrop map) but don’t need the complexity of the original vector data, this new stuff is for you.
OS MasterMap – detailed but complex
OS MasterMap is the most detailed product offered by Ordnance Survey. Maps made with with OS MasterMap have been available through Digimap’s mapping facilities since 2007, but if you wanted to use OS MasterMap as background for a customised map by overlaying your own data in a GIS you needed to download and convert the raw GML data. If all you want is a detailed colour background image, this seems like a significant investment of time.
Rasterised OS MasterMap – images not data
Digimap now offers OS MasterMap as .tif images at two scales: 1:1000 and 1:2000 through the usual Data Download facility. This saves you having to download, convert and import the data using specialist GIS software.
Where do I get the OS MasterMap raster background maps?
Log in to Digimap’s OS Collection, go to Data Download and select which scale of OS MasterMap image you want from the list of products. The images are tiled in 1km square tiles, so you can select your area of interest, and the tiles covering it, in the same way as other tiled datasets.
The scales are determined according to the distance on the ground represented by each pixel. The larger scale images are based on a measurement of 0.3125m per pixel. The smaller scale images are based on a measurement of 0.625m per pixel. These equate to approximate scales of 1:1000 and 1:2000 respectively, although these are dependent on the screen resolution of your monitor. You can easily display the maps at other scales, but some loss of image quality may occur if you do.
We have created some “How To” video clips and put them on YouTube for everyone to view. They show how to carry out various tasks with Digimap’s online maps and downloaded data.
If there are any particular aspects of the service for which you would like us to make a video, you can add them to the discussion on our Facebook page or email us directly at edina@ed.ac.uk.
These annotation tools are a first phase, to see what you find the most useful. We would like to hear from you about any changes or additions you would like making to the tools. Please send feedback to our help desk:
