London Revealed

The GeoInformation Group Reveals London In Just One Day

New aerial imagery captured using state-of-the-art camera

10 June 2010: Cambridge – A stunning new aerial image revealing life in remarkable detail across the capital has been captured by The GeoInformation® Group to upgrade its existing Cities Revealed™ London database.

This new aerial photography survey of London was completed in just one day on the 23rd of May 2010.  Previous air surveys of London have taken up to three years to complete due to weather and complexities of air traffic restrictions across one of the busiest air spaces in the world.

Using a state-of-the-art digital A3 camera, The GeoInformation Group, along with its flying partner Aerodata International Surveys, was able to survey and collect over 4500 images across London in one flight.  The new camera technology enabled the survey aircraft to fly more efficiently yet still collect 10 cm ground resolution imagery.

This is the first time that photography of London has been collected at this level in such a short space of time. The clarity and detail makes it possible to see work ongoing at the Olympic Site, count the empty seats on open top buses and even see people enjoying the sunshine in Trafalgar Square.

“We are very excited about the success of this new project and the benefits it will bring to our customers,” comments Dr Alun Jones, Managing Director of The GeoInformation Group.  “Early feedback from our customers to the first sample images and the news that all of London was captured in just one day has been highly positive and now they just want to get their hands on this unique database”.

These images are geographically accurate and will be processed into one seamless, map accurate, image database. This database will be made available as a standalone image product and via The GeoInformation Group online service.  It will also be used to update The GeoInformation Group’s new, large-scale mapping product, UKMap®.

A better way to enjoy shopping centres

I know many of us have an aversion to shopping centres but we at UKMap quite like them. They offer quite a challenge to us not only in mapping their exterior but also the interior complete with the multi-level aspect too.

Well this is a sneak preview of the results of our efforts to incorporate all the retail information into UKMap; here is Brent Cross shopping centre in glorious 3D. Created using ESRI ArcGIS and Sketch Up V6.0.

Video of this here on the new UKMap YouTube channel

So far we have mapped the exterior of all 68 major shopping centres across greater London as part of the UKMap product and have now completed the internal structures of 23 of them.

Each shop is named, classified and coloured, above, according to its retail category; one of 110 retail categories inside UKMap, these include for example, department stores, coffee shops, florists, mobile phone shops etc.

With building footprint, name, address, retail classification and 3D structure this offers a unique combination of GIS and retail information visualised in a way we hope makes such complex data seem simple . Now to finish the rest of the shopping centres!

UKMAP good for Land Registry

Great news was received today at UKMap HQ. After much review and testing Land Registry have confirmed [and are happy for us to tell people] that they are happy to accept registrations based on UKMap.
Great news for all those consultants, government types and property professional using UKMap.
Full text below
"Following a review of UKMap, Land Registry is able to confirm that UKMap meets Land Registry's requirements as a mapping base on which registration applications can be made and is comfortable accepting registration applications based on UKMap. Such registration applications must still follow relevant guidance as set out in Public Guide 40."

Latest Updates to UKMap

Where has time gone - cannot believe my last post was way back in December.  So a rapid catch up is needed.  Here it is:

New customers (just a sample)

• London Fire, serious users with a serious need to get better mapping.  Now they have that with UKMap.
• London Borough of Islington - managing their green environment, UKMap's trees and Land Use makes all the difference for them.
• Mott Macdonald - detailed city centre mapping, all in glorious 3D.
• Promap - the UK's leading mapping portal for the Land and Property market have announced they are taking UKMap

UKMap Updates

1. Points of Interest improvements - to include sub classes, so now it is much easier to analyse and search for key locations such as, car parks (part of Transport), law courts (part of Local Govt), schools (community) and leisure centres (Sports and Leisure)
2. Fire stations - yes thanks to feed back from London Fire we have now improved our Fire Station database, including London's newest fire station.
3. Retail Centres - major update to include all floors and all shops, collected in the last few months
4. Improvements to retail building divisions - new updates following additional field work.

This plus other technical edits have have been requested by users and we are pleased to be able to accomodate their wishes to continue improving UKMap.

Other news

We were pleased to see that our long standing customer London Borough of Brent  was was commended by the Association For Geographic Information in its Public Sector category for Brent's innovative application of UKMap.

The most recent piece of news is that we have announced for the first time our sponsorship of GISRUK 2010 and we are looking forward to announcing a UKMap challenge to the academic community in conjunction with this conference.  Contact me if you want more information.

I'll try to keep up to date with developments here with more posts in the future.

UKMap Presentation

Lots of partners and attendees of our training courses have been asking about some additional slide material. So to help spread the word I have uploaded the basic UKMap presentation. Enjoy! More to follow.

Let me know what other subjects you would like to see: applications, licensing, technology etc

UKMap Presentation R1

View more presentations from Alun Jones.

Devil is in the detail!

Well just about everyone else has blogged about this so I thought I would too, but with questions that we should ask about the announcement that OS data will be free.


At the high level this is good, very good, not just for us at UKMap, not just for professional map users but for all levels of society that will now benefit from increased applications and services that will undoubtedly arise as a result of this.

But, and it is a big BUT, the devil is in the detail.
Questions:

1. Specifically what datasets will be considered free, all down to 1:10k, vector and raster, ONS boundaries? Need a list!

2. Postcode boundaries to what level, areas- rubbish, districts - mmmm - Sectors - Ok, Units yes please, but doubt it?

3. No mention of the Royal Mail?

4. What will the extent of derived data be, just on those datasets that are free - very difficult to police, so all datasets?

5. What will be the definition of derived data be. I would say KISS, check out UKMap's view. The simpler the better, adopt a policy of cooperation and then go after obvious infringements and not scare everyone.

6. Implementation time, all go on April 1st (make that the 2nd)?

7. Derived data on archived material, surely it must relate to all data created not new data?

Key of course this represents very little revenue to Ordnance Survey, so it will be interesting to see what the quid pro quo is for them for taking this step. A more commercialised Ordnance Survey – watch out partners?

So roll on the 14th Dec - is the date I heard for the release of the consultation - and lets all make a positive contribution to the future of GI in this country.

GeoCompetition and Innovation

Last week I was invited to give a talk at the annual AGI Scotland event on the subject of Geo competition and innovation.

I have been asked by many for a copy of the slides, so here they are.

To summarise the message of my talk: "even in a time that many may consider to be doom and gloom there are many many bright initiavtives and innovations happenning across the world. These innovations are driving competition and this competition is delivering savings and improved services to the end user.

Organisations, particularly government ones, that have strategies that see them fixed into one technology or one supplier will find it increasing difficult to test and adopt such innovations and naturally will not see the savings that such innovations and competition bring with it."