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
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.
EDINA has again calculated the commercial cost of all the data downloaded and maps created for printing in all Digimap Collections for the period August 2014 to July 2015. This was done per subscribing institution and then totalled; the grand total is approximately £77.25 million. This estimate is a conservative one because we reduce the quantity of data downloaded by 60% to account for duplication of usage. When all the maps printed and data downloaded were included in the calculation (i.e assuming users would continue to take their own data and maps, and not share them) this total rises to almost £128.5 million.
Click to enlarge image
We know that some data is downloaded multiple times within an institution, for example by students during a class exercise or by individual researchers working on the same study site. We found that on average only 40% of the data taken from Digimap over a period of time was unique within an institution. We believe that if institutions were paying commercial rates for their data they would be more likely to download it once and circulate it to those who need it; this is why we reduce the amount of data included in our calculation. However, there is considerable variation between institutions as to how much is unique; those that do more research or are smaller in size tend to have a greater proportion of unique downloads (i.e. fewer people downloading the same areas, for example, for the same study site), so we have included the 100% figure as a ceiling value.
Click to enlarge image
In total, over the past five academic years over £435 million (£248 million at 40%) worth of print maps and data has been served up from Digimap to subscribing institutions. The steep increase in 2013-14 was caused by more Ordnance Survey products being downloaded and printed than ever before and also by the high commercial costs of several products added to the Geology Digimap service. The upward trend in the total commercial costs has continued in 2014-15, though at a steadier rate, however we are seeing the same year on year growth in the number of logins to the service.
How the Costs are Calculated
Click to enlarge image
The costs used in our calculations for the data are sampled from the list prices published by a range of data suppliers, and include any relevant multipliers or discounts declared publicly on their websites.
Each data product is assessed individually because many are priced differently. The obvious example is OS MasterMap, which is charged on the basis of the TOID density per square kilometre. TOID density changes according to the area mapped. Each product is price-checked annually against a range of suppliers.
We calculate the values on a per product / per institution basis, with the data preparation and licensing charges assigned only once per product, per institution (rather than per data request). Many of the data collections are commercially licensed based on the number of users who have access to the data; with increasing numbers of users a multiplier is applied to a base cost. We applied the relevant multipliers according to the number of active registered users for each Collection at an institution.
We capped data costs at the price of national coverage for each product, making it impossible to assign greater cost for any one product than it would be to supply the entire dataset for use by a whole institution.
The values for the print maps (including saved maps in all Roam applications) are calculated by finding the cheapest commercially available map prints from websites such as eMapsite, NLS and FiND.
What We Didn’t Include
Click to enlarge image
No monetary values were assigned to the millions of screen maps that are produced from Digimap. The value calculated also doesn’t take into account any of the help materials, training courses and support facilities that are all part of the Digimap service. Many commercial service providers may charge an additional fee for this part of the service.
All OpenData products (both prints and data downloads) are excluded from the calculation, despite the advantages of producing them from Digimap over other websites.
However, the biggest saving that isn’t included in these value calculations is your time. We only charged the data supplier’s preparation and licensing costs once per product or order, in line with each company’s policy where it applied. In reality there would be many orders occurring throughout an academic year as new research questions are raised. This all costs time, time spent submitting data requests and waiting for them to return; time to create and manage a repository for spatial data; time to acquire the knowledge on how to use the data you receive. Commercial providers mitigate these delays but may charge fees for the convenience. By providing 24 hour access to high quality data, customisable maps and detailed support materials through purpose built interfaces, Digimap saves this time and expense for its users.
Digimap avoids students, academics and support staff having to wait longer than necessary for the information they need and the instruction on how to use it.
We will be sending out each institution’s data cost calculations to Digimap site representatives. If you are interested in the commercial costs of the maps and data your institution has been using please contact your site representative. If you are unsure who your site representative is, please contact us:
A number of key datatsets have been updated in Digimap this December in several of the collections.
Of particular note are the updates to the Marine collection. The HydroView Charts raster product from SeaZone is now available in two versions: ‘Full Marginalia’ and ‘No Marginalia’. Users can select the version after adding the product to the basket in Marine Download.
The ‘No Marginalia’ version has all extra information round the map (e.g. north arrows, scale bars, inset maps etc.) removed and replaced with transparent areas. This makes it ideal for use in GIS software allowing you to pan across adjacent charts without this information obscuring the map data.
Furthermore the Charted Raster .tif files are now supplied with .tab files for accurate positioning in MapInfo.
The tables below lists all the datasets that have been updated in each collection together with the publishing date for each one.
Ordnance Survey Data Download
Product Name
OS Published Date
Boundary-Line
October 2015
Geology Download
Product Name
BGS Published Date
Boreholes
January 2015,
April 2015,
July 2015,
October 2015
Marine Download
Product Name
SeaZone Published Date
HydroSpatial One
August 2015
HydroView Charts (all scales)
August 2015
If you have any questions about the dataset updates or Digimap please contact us:
EDINA has updated Geology Roam with a whole range of new data, allowing users access to nearly all the data available from Geology Download without needing to put it into GIS software. We have also updated the Active legend, so you can now order it by the Age of the Rocks on the map.
New Data
As you can see in the image above the most zoomed out levels now have the Offshore Geology data (DigRock250 and DigSBS250) allowing you to see the rocks and sea bed sediments around the coast of the United kingdom. We have also added in the most detailed onshore geological mapping from the British Geological Survey, the 1:10,000 and 1:25,000 scale maps (DiGMapGB-10 and DiGMapGB25). Please note that these datasets do not have national coverage, where they are not present there is a water mark on the map to inform you. As there is almost no overlap between these two large scale datasets EDINA has combined them into a single detailed geology layer.
Basemaps
To allow different datasets to be viewed at the same scale we have introduced the basemaps tab so that the geology data can be switched with the scale remaining the same. Adding the basemaps tab has also allowed us to introduce new ways of viewing the same data, with all the geology layers now viewable as both the Rock Unit e.g. Kimmeridge Clay Formation and Rock Type e.g. Mudstone.
The basemaps tab has allowed many datasets to be view at the same scale so in addition to the new geological data we have also added several extra types of data which provide information about the soil and hydrogeology of Great Britain. The Geological Indicators of Flooding; Permeability (Max and Min); 1:625,000 Scale Hydrogeology; along with Soil Strength, Texture and Calcium Carbonate content from the Soil Parent Material Data are now all available as basemaps.
Active Legend
Click image to enlarge…
The final change made to the Geology Roam interface has been to the Active Legends which now allow you to order the entries by their age. The ordering is based on the MAX_INDEX attribute in the geology data that allows you to order the Rock Units based on its oldest age.
The active legend still lets you rocks on the map by clicking on the legend and vice versa.
A full list of the products available in each view / scale can be found in the Geology Roam “How To Guide” here:
As part of our work to demonstrate the value for money of the Digimap Collections, EDINA has calculated the commercial cost of all the data downloaded and maps created for printing. We calculated the values per institution for the period August 2013 to July 2014 then totalled them; this came to approximately £65.4 million. This estimate is a conservative one because we reduce the quantity of data downloaded by 60% to account for duplication. When all the maps printed and data downloaded were included in the calculation (i.e assuming users would continue to take their own data and maps, and not share them) this total rises to over £107 million.
Click to enlarge image
We know that some data is downloaded multiple times within an institution, for example by students for a class exercise or by researchers for specific study sites. We found that on average only 40% of the data taken from Digimap over a period of time was unique within an institution. We believe that if institutions were paying commercial rates for their data they would be more likely to download it once and circulate it to those who need it; this is why we reduce the amount of data included in our calculation. However, there is considerable variation between institutions as to how much is unique; those that do more research or are smaller in size tend to have a greater proportion of unique downloads, so we calculated the 100% figure as a ceiling value.
In total, over the past four academic years over £306 million (£170 million at 40%) worth of print maps and data has been served up from Digimap to subscribing institutions. The steep increase in 2013-14 was caused by more Ordnance Survey products being downloaded and printed than ever before and also by the high commercial costs of several products added to the Geology Digimap service.
How the Costs are Calculated
Click to enlarge image
The costs used in our calculations for the data come from the list prices published by data suppliers, and include any relevant multipliers or discounts declared publicly on their websites.
The data costs we calculated are done on a per product / per institution basis, with the data preparation and licensing charges assigned only once per product, per institution (rather than per data request). Many of the data collections are commercially licensed based on the number of users who have access to the data; with increasing numbers of users a multiplier is applied to a base cost. We applied the relevant multipliers according to the number of active registered users for each Collection at an institution.
We capped data costs at the price of national coverage for each product, making it impossible to assign greater cost for any one product than it would be to supply the entire dataset for use by a whole institution.
The values for the print maps (including saved maps in all Roam applications) are calculated by finding the cheapest commercially available map prints from websites such as eMapsite, NLS and FiND.
What We Didn’t Include
Click to enlarge image
No monetary values were assigned to the millions of screen maps that are produced from Digimap. The value calculated also doesn’t take into account any of the help materials, training courses and support facilities that are all part of the Digimap service.
No OpenData downloads or maps created from OpenData are included in the calculation, despite the advantages of producing them from Digimap rather than other websites.
However, the biggest saving that isn’t included in these value calculations is your time. We only charged the data supplier’s preparation and licensing costs once per product or order, in line with each company’s policy where it applied. In reality there would be many orders occurring throughout an academic year as new research questions are raised. This all costs time, time which the data suppliers will charge for or that institutional staff would have to take to submit requests for data and time for staff to create and manage a repository for spatial data.
With 24 hour access to high quality data and maps through a purpose built mapping and data download interface, Digimap does all this work for its subscribers.
Over the coming weeks we will be sending out each institution’s data cost calculations to Digimap site representatives. If you are interested in the commercial costs of the maps and data your institution has been using please contact your site represenative. If you are unsure who your site representative is, please contact us:
We have now added detailed 1:10,000 and 1:25,000 geological mapping data and 1:625,000 hydrogeological data to Geology Download. The mapping data is the most detailed geological mapping available from the British Geological Survey (BGS), consisting of four polygon layers:
bedrock geology (‘solid’);
superficial deposits (‘drift’ or Quaternary)
mass movement (mostly landslide)
artificial (or man-made ground)
…and one linear features layer, including:
thin beds (such as coal seams and fossil bands)
faults
mineral veins
some landforms
The products cover around 30% of the UK most of the which is provided by the 1:10,000 scale data (approx 28% of the UK), as the coverage is not complete we have added overlays to Geology Download to guide you to the areas where it can be found. The BGS have more map tiles in production for this dataset and we will add them to the service as they become available to us. The coverage of the data can be seen in the Download interface below as the dark blue areas of Great Britain.
The 1:25,000 has a much smaller coverage, but with little overlap with the 1:10,000 it makes a good companion dataset to fill in the gaps. The 1:25,000 data also fills the gaps in the 1:50,000 data in Wales, again the coverage can be seen in the interface below as the dark blue areas.
To access the coverage maps click on the double arrow to open the Show Grid / Overlay panel on the right side of the map; you can then add the grids to the map to see where data is available. We highly recommend you do this before selecting your area for download as it is not possible to add data to your basket if you choose a product with no coverage for your that area. If you find that the Add to Basket button remains grey after you have selected your products it probably means that one or more of them do not have coverage for the area you have chosen. If you click on the grey button an error message will tell you which products are unavailable, either remove these from the order or switch on the overlay and choose a different location that has the data.
In addition to the 1:10,000 and 1:25,000 scale mapping datasets we have also added the BGS OpenData 1:625,000 scale digital hydrogeological data to Geology Download. This data can be used to indicate the aquifer potential of an area in generalised terms. Areas are categorised into one of three groups:
those in which intergranular flow in the saturated zone is dominant
those in which flow is controlled by fissures or discontinuities
less permeable formations including aquifers concealed at depth beneath covering layers
The 1:625 000 scale data may be used as a guide to the aquifers at a regional or national level, but should not be relied on for local information.
The addition of these new datasets brings the total number of different BGS products in Geology Download to 14. We hope to add the detailed mapping datasets to Geology Roam later in the year as well as some of the other types of data as overlays or basemaps.
If you have any questions about the new datasets or any requests for geology data we don’t yet have then please get in touch:
As part of our work to demonstrate the impact of Digimap, EDINA has calculated the commercial value of all the data downloaded and maps created for printing. We calculated the values per institution for the period August 2012 to May 2013 then totalled them; this came to approximately £39 .5 million. This estimate is a conservative one as we reduce the quantity of data downloaded by 60% to account for duplication. When all the maps printed and data downloaded were included in the calculation (i.e assuming users would continue to take their own data and maps, and not share them) the value rises to nearly £71 million.
Click to enlarge image.
We know that some data is downloaded multiple times within an institution, for example by the students in a class exercise or for specific study sites. We found that only 40% of the data taken from Digimap over a period of time was unique to an average institution. We believe that if institutions were paying commercial rates for their data it would be more likely that they would try to download it once and then circulate it to those who need it; for this reason the value calculations only include 40% of the total. However, there is considerable variation between institutions as to how much is unique; those that do more research or are smaller in size tend to have a greater proportion of unique downloads, so we have included the 100% figure as a ceiling value.
In total, over the past three academic years over £190 million (£100 million at 40%) worth of print maps and data has been served up from Digimap to subscribing institutions.
How the Costs are Calculated
Click to enlarge image.
The costs used in our calculations for the data downloaded come from the data suppliers, and include any relevant multipliers or discounts made publicly available on their websites.
The data values are calculated on a per product / per institution basis, with the data preparation and licensing charges assigned only once per product, per institution. Many of the data collections are licensed based on the number of users who have access to the data; with increasing numbers of users a multiplier is applied to a base cost. We applied the relevant multipliers based on the number of active registered users for each collection at an institution. SeaZone data is provided commercially through a third party website; we picked the closest match possible to the data we provide though this does have a lower cost, again making the estimates conservative.
We capped data values at the price it would cost to take national coverage of each product, making it impossible to charge more for any one product than it would to supply the entire dataset for use by the whole institution.
The values for the print maps (including saved images in Carto and Ancient Roam) are calculated by finding the cheapest available commercial map prints from websites such as eMapsite, NLS and FiND. These values are updated every time we calculate the values.
What We Didn’t Include
Click to enlarge image.
No monetary values were assigned to the millions of screen maps that are produced from Digimap; we couldn’t find a comparable site! Also, the value calculated doesn’t take into account any of the support materials, training courses and help desk facilities that are all part of the Digimap service.
No OpenData downloads or maps created from OpenData are included in the calculation, despite the advantages of producing them from Digimap over other websites.
However the biggest saving that isn’t included in these value calculations is your time. We only charged the data supplier’s preparation and licensing costs once per product or order, in line with each companies policy. In reality there would be many orders occurring throughout an academic year as new research questions are raised. This all costs time, time which the data suppliers will charge for or that institutional staff would have to take to put in requests for data or to create and manage a repository for spatial data.
Digimap does all this work for its subscribers along with providing a high quality mapping interface, 24 hour access to expensive high quality data and maps.
Over the coming weeks we will be sending out each institution’s values to Digimap site representatives. If you are interested in the value of the maps and data your institution has been using then get in touch with them. If you are unsure who your site representative is then please contact us:
Geology Roam and Geology download are now using the most up-to-date detailed geology map data:
DiGMapGB-50 Version 6.20, 1:50,000 scale data
Geology Data isn’t updated very often, and it is great to have the data refreshed for the new academic year. Version 6 has a few new tiles; there are now only 3 tiles of missing data in Wales, and there have also been a few tile updates elsewhere in the UK such as SC064 which has now been split into two regular sized tiles, SC064E Ben Macdui and SC064W Newtonmore.
There have also been some small changes to the attribution of the data which is now at level 20. The main difference is that each polygon now has a link to both the Lexicon of Named Rock Units and the Rock Classification Schema within it’s attributes. Digimap Roam already provided the key information via the Get Rock Info tool.
Marine Digimap
Marine Roam and Hydrospatial Download now benefit from updated Hydrospatial data. There are many updates to the features available and more layers area available across more tiles.
This year’s annual data update will take place at the beginning of September. There will be a refresh the following Ordnance Survey products:
MasterMap Topography and ITN Layers
VectorMap Local
Meridian2
Strategi
MiniScale
Code-Point
Code-Point with Polygons
Boundary Line
1:250,000 Colour Raster
1:50 000 Colour Raster
1:25 000 Colour Raster
1:10 000 Raster
1:50 000 Scale Gazetteer
There will also be updated Hydrospatial data in Marine Digimap and a new version of the DiGMapGB-50 data in Geology Digimap.
Along with the new data Ancient Roam will be getting the Annotation Tools and there may be a bit of a surprise bonus addition to Digimap Roam. More information will be posted on the Blog, Twitter and Facebook page nearer the time.
New data
On Thursday 17th September EDINA released all available updates for data provided through Digimap’s Ordnance Survey Collection. Details of the versions of all the data offered can be found on the EDINA website here. The Digimap licence also now offers MiniScale and the OS 1:250,000 scale colour raster data. These are currently available through ShareGeo and will be added to the Data Download as soon as possible.
Architectural Changes
As well as updating the data, other significant changes have been made to the underlying technologies supporting Digimap. In short, we have replaced the entire GIS architecture which produces the maps you see online.
The new software, from Cadcorp, offers a number of benefits to both EDINA and end users of Digimap. As well as enhanced quality maps and faster map generation online, the printed output gives crisp, clear maps as PDF files. EPS files are no longer available from any facility within Digimap’s OS Collection, including Carto, but EDINA is working on the provision of additional formats to PDF.
New mapping facility: Roam
With the arrival of the new GIS software, EDINA has also developed a new mapping facility, called Roam. Still in a development phase, Roam offers the usual search functions as well as “slippy maps”, the click-and-drag function used to position a map, familiar to users of other popular online mapping facilities. It is easier to locate your map, easier to zoom in and out, and now offers maps at 12 different fixed scales. An additional small scale Ordnance Survey mapping product, MiniScale, has been included, and other datasets (e.g. Strategi and OS MasterMap) are available at more than one fixed scale.
Currently Roam is available as a Beta facility to site representatives only until Monday 5th October, when it will become available to all registered users of Digimap’s Ordnance Survey Collection. Roam is available from the OS Collection Home page; you will find the new icon next to those for Classic and Carto. It will be greyed out if you don’t yet have access to it.
Roam will run in Beta alongside the current Classic facility until January 2010 when Classic will be withdrawn entirely. Regular updates will be made to Roam to add new functionality, such as MyMaps, prior to its release as a full service in January 2010.
If you have any questions about this email or about Digimap in general, please do not hesitate to contact the EDINA Helpdesk on edina@ed.ac.uk
