From planning applications and building development to crime mapping, incident response, land management or demographic studies - geographic information is being used for all manner of day-to-day business purposes.
However, the increase in possible uses for maps and associated geographic data is commensurate with user demand for easier access and the need for improved capability to use the information with the software of choice. A new on-line mapping portal is making spatial data available to all - Andrew Terry, Technical Manager for centremapslive.com explains:
Responding to demand, centremapslive.com, the mapping portal from Laser Surveys, has been designed to bring spatial data from a wide range of resources together into one location. In layman’s terms centremapslive.com is essentially a one-stop shop mapping resource, whereby users can purchase as little or as much information as required before downloading it into a format of their own choosing.
Key collaboration
The breadth of centremapslive.com online offering has been made possible through collaboration with a nationwide consortium of mapping organisations, including Ordnance Survey, British Geological Survey, Intermap Technologies, Blom, Cities Revealed, The Geoinformation Group, Infoterra, Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland, Groundsure, Environmental Agency and Getmapping.
With their support, the portal makes available mapping data such as property-level, street-level, local/outdoor mapping, road mapping, geological mapping, aerial photography, height information, postcode mapping, and administrative areas. A recent addition is Groundsure’s broad range of environmental reviews and associated data products for both the commercial and residential sectors, including the recently completed national historical mapping archive, which has been scanned to an exceptional level of resolution and detail.
Bringing together a broad range of resources in one location, unprecedented ease of access to Centremaps data is facilitated by a simple browser-based user interface. Once the required information has been selected, all users then have to do is simply ‘cut out’ and download the data in the required format and scale.
Hosting data & multiple formats
For product generation, GeognoSIS was the solution of choice for Centremapslive as the service is designed to host data and to serve it in multiple formats. Mapping outputs can be delivered in a range of industry standard data formats including CSV, DWG, DXF, OGC Geography Markup Language (GML), and TIFF – as well as Adobe PDF with unique layering capabilities. Using standard free PDF viewing software, users can switch between the different views which makes the information even more useful to customers who do not have access to GIS or CAD software.
The capability of GeognoSIS makes it possible to read and/or write over 150 GIS, CAD, graphic and database formats without recourse to translation and additional-cost middleware. This enabled Centremaps to build the application quickly and cost effectively to maintain costs – the portal can then pass on these benefits to customers.
A dynamic solution, GeognoSIS is also used to operate a number of web services carrying out various tasks within centremapslive.com. These range from simple pricing calculation processes to more complex activities, such as the ‘group’ drawing tool that allows users wanting to highlight areas on an OS MasterMap print the ability to quickly draw a rough area encompassing those mapping features required, without needing to carefully ‘click’ around complex boundaries.
Easier licensing
As well as making geographic information more readily available to specialists and non-specialists alike, centremapslive.com has been developed to enable multiple users within an organisation to have their own accounts. As well as being able to place their own, individual orders, they can also see as an outlined area on screen any existing data purchases they or other colleagues have previously placed.
Furthermore, addressing a long-standing area of concern for many users of Ordnance Survey mapping, centremapslive.com provides the Plan, Design and Build Licence for data exports – specifically designed for the building and construction industry. Making available multi-year licensing, this license means the client is no longer obliged to re-purchase the data after 12 months, as is technically the case under the Internal Business Use Licence. It also enables up to 40 users working on the same project the opportunity to share data - regardless of whether they work for the same company. This can be particularly useful for, say, an architectural practice that wishes to include mapping in a proposal for a client.
Archiving rights for 13 years are also included under the new licence to help meet the need to refer to the original mapping for legal reasons, whilst monthly e-mails to the main account administrator provide a regular updated summary of what data is licensed or approaching expiry.
As Paula Langford-Smith, Marketing Manager, Ordnance Survey says: “We are delighted with the solution that centremapslive.com has produced, because it addresses copyright issues at the same time as providing high value solutions to help professionals with their projects.
"With downloads currently running at several hundred a week - DXF/DWG and PDF generally being the preferred data formats – it also addresses their stated demands for easier access to information, delivered in a format that can be used immediately, regardless of whether they have access to GIS or CAD software. As a result, centremapslive.com should go a long way to geo-enabling the mainstream business community.”
