Digimap
Encyclopedia
Digimap is a web mapping
and online data delivery service developed by the EDINA
national data centre for UK academia. It offers a range of on-line mapping and data download facilities which provide maps and spatial data from Ordnance Survey
, British Geological Survey
, Landmark Information Group and SeaZone Ltd. (marine mapping data and charts from the UK Hydrographic Office). The service is funded by the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee).
Digimap is only available to members of subscribing higher and further education institutions in the UK. The service is free at the point of use but requires individual registration. Subscription fees are based on an institutional banding system devised by JISC Collections.
Award for Technological Progress in 2000.
In mid 2010 Digimap for Schools was launched, providing on-line maps to the schools sector . The service won a Gold Certificate for the best overall resource in the Geographical Association
’s 2011 Publishers’ Awards.
; and a data download facility. Additional facilities for downloading boundary and postcode data, as well as postcode and gazetteer querying tools, were included later.
In 2007 a separate download facility was developed to allow the download of OS MasterMap
data.
In 2009 the simple mapping client (Classic) was replaced with a new interface, Roam, which makes use of OpenLayers
"slippy map" technology.
d images of old Ordnance Survey maps were added as a new collection to Digimap in April 2005. The collection was scanned by Landmark Information Group and comprises the Ordnance Survey County Series maps and the National Grid maps covering the period up to the release of the digital Land-Line
product in 1996. Along with the scanned maps Landmark also created a mosaic for each map series and each of its revisions, these mosaics have then been cut up into the current Ordnance Survey national grid
squares.
The service originally consisted of a single interface for viewing maps and downloading either the national grid squares or the original scanned sheets as GeoTIFF
images.
In 2010 a new facility called Ancient Roam was released as a beta service to provide a "slippy maps" style interface for viewing the maps. A separate download interface was also added which allows a greater number of maps to be taken in a single session. At this time the most detailed historic Ordnance Survey maps, the Town Plans, were also offered through the service.
A separate viewer for the Dudley Stamp Land-use Survey maps from the 1930s is also included in the collection.
(BGS) mapping data.
The service contains the BGS DiGMapGB (Digital Geological Map of Great Britain) Data at three scales: 1:625,000, 1:250,000 and 1:50,000 and uses grey-scale Ordnance Survey mapping as a backdrop for the online mapping facilities. Geology Digimap provides a data download facility in addition to online mapping. This offers the ability to download BGS data for onward use in GIS application software.
In 2010 Geology Digimap a new interface, Geology Roam, was developed to enable slippy map browsing, changes in the opacity of the geology over the backdrop mapping and additional zoom levels.
and raster
mapping datasets from SeaZone. The service offers Hydrospatial data which is a vector data product created from various hydrographic surveys and data agencies. There is also the Charted Raster dataset, which contains scanned and georeferenced Admiralty Charts from the UK Hydrographic Office.
, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government
and Dr Vanessa Lawrence CB
, Director General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey at Graveney School
in Wandsworth, London on Wednesday 10 November 2010. The service was offered free to all schools with 11 year old pupils until the end of 2011, as part of the Free maps for 11-year-olds scheme. The service is very similar to Digimap Roam for Higher Education, allowing teachers and pupils to view the majority of Ordnance Survey's mapping products on-line, and print them out.
and proprietary software
to provide a range of facilities. JavaScript
and Java Applet
mapping tools are used to present data from PostGIS
databases via MapServer
and TileCache (Tile Map Service
) software. Maps from the TileCache and customised maps specified by the user are created on demand using Cadcorp's
GeognoSIS software and presented to the user via an OpenLayers
and MapFish
interface. In 2010 the EDINA Geoservices Team received a "Highly Commended" in the Innovation & Best Practice (Charitable Status) Award from the AGI, for its implementation of its new technical infrastructure.
In 2007 Snowflake Software's Go Publisher and an Oracle
database were added to the software supporting the delivery of Ordnance Survey's OS MasterMap GML
data.
The Digimap service is OGC standards compliant and EDINA
is an active member of the Open Geospatial Consortium
, hosting a meeting in June 2006.
Web mapping
Web mapping is the process of designing, implementing, generating and delivering maps on the World Wide Web and its product. While web mapping primarily deals with technological issues, web cartography additionally studies theoretic aspects: the use of web maps, the evaluation and optimization of...
and online data delivery service developed by the EDINA
EDINA
EDINA is a UK-based data centre , which provides data applications delivered over the Internet and aimed primarily at Higher Education staff and students in the United Kingdom....
national data centre for UK academia. It offers a range of on-line mapping and data download facilities which provide maps and spatial data from Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...
, British Geological Survey
British Geological Survey
The British Geological Survey is a partly publicly funded body which aims to advance geoscientific knowledge of the United Kingdom landmass and its continental shelf by means of systematic surveying, monitoring and research. The BGS headquarters are in Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, but other centres...
, Landmark Information Group and SeaZone Ltd. (marine mapping data and charts from the UK Hydrographic Office). The service is funded by the JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee).
Digimap is only available to members of subscribing higher and further education institutions in the UK. The service is free at the point of use but requires individual registration. Subscription fees are based on an institutional banding system devised by JISC Collections.
History
Digimap started as a project under the eLib (Electronic Libraries) Programme in 1996 offering Ordnance Survey maps to 6 trial universities: Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Oxford and Reading. The full service was launched in 2000 and won the AGIAGI
AGI may refer to:* Alliance Graphique Internationale* Adjusted Gross Income* Adventure Game Interpreter, used by Sierra On-Line in the 1980s.* Agenzia Giornalistica Italia, an Italian news agency....
Award for Technological Progress in 2000.
In mid 2010 Digimap for Schools was launched, providing on-line maps to the schools sector . The service won a Gold Certificate for the best overall resource in the Geographical Association
Geographical Association
The Geographical Association is a Sheffield, United Kingdom-based subject association with the core charitable objective of furthering the study, learning and teaching of geography. It is a lively community of practice with over a century of innovation behind it and an unrivalled understanding of...
’s 2011 Publishers’ Awards.
Structure
The Digimap service has four collections for higher and further education; Ordnance Survey, Historic, Geology and Marine. There is also the Digimap for Schools service, which is available to primary and secondary education institutions.Digimap: Ordnance Survey Collection
When Digimap was first launched this was the only collection of data available. Originally, the service consisted of a simple mapping client, first known as Lite then re-launched as Classic; an advanced mapping facility, Digimap Carto, which is a Java AppletJava applet
A Java applet is an applet delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. Java applets can run in a Web browser using a Java Virtual Machine , or in Sun's AppletViewer, a stand-alone tool for testing applets...
; and a data download facility. Additional facilities for downloading boundary and postcode data, as well as postcode and gazetteer querying tools, were included later.
In 2007 a separate download facility was developed to allow the download of OS MasterMap
OS MasterMap
OS MasterMap® is Ordnance Survey's flagship digital product, launched in November 2001. It is a database that records every fixed feature of Great Britain larger than a few metres in one continuous digital map. Every feature is given a unique TOID , a simple identifier that includes no semantic...
data.
In 2009 the simple mapping client (Classic) was replaced with a new interface, Roam, which makes use of OpenLayers
OpenLayers
OpenLayers is an open source JavaScript library for displaying map data in web browsers. It provides an API for building rich web-based geographic applications similar to Google Maps and Bing Maps...
"slippy map" technology.
Historic Digimap
The scanned and georeferenceGeoreference
To georeference something means to define its existence in physical space. That is, establishing its location in terms of map projections or coordinate systems. The term is used both when establishing the relation between raster or vector images and coordinates, and when determining the spatial...
d images of old Ordnance Survey maps were added as a new collection to Digimap in April 2005. The collection was scanned by Landmark Information Group and comprises the Ordnance Survey County Series maps and the National Grid maps covering the period up to the release of the digital Land-Line
Land-line
In the UK Land-Line is a comprehensive dataset, provided by Ordnance Survey, depicting man-made and natural features ranging from houses, factories, roads and rivers to marshland and administrative boundaries. Land-Line is a vector format ....
product in 1996. Along with the scanned maps Landmark also created a mosaic for each map series and each of its revisions, these mosaics have then been cut up into the current Ordnance Survey national grid
British national grid reference system
The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references used in Great Britain, different from using latitude and longitude....
squares.
The service originally consisted of a single interface for viewing maps and downloading either the national grid squares or the original scanned sheets as GeoTIFF
GeoTIFF
GeoTIFF is a public domain metadata standard which allows georeferencing information to be embedded within a TIFF file. The potential additional information includes map projection, coordinate systems, ellipsoids, datums, and everything else necessary to establish the exact spatial reference for...
images.
In 2010 a new facility called Ancient Roam was released as a beta service to provide a "slippy maps" style interface for viewing the maps. A separate download interface was also added which allows a greater number of maps to be taken in a single session. At this time the most detailed historic Ordnance Survey maps, the Town Plans, were also offered through the service.
A separate viewer for the Dudley Stamp Land-use Survey maps from the 1930s is also included in the collection.
Geology Digimap
Geology Digimap was launched in January 2007 to provide access to British Geological SurveyBritish Geological Survey
The British Geological Survey is a partly publicly funded body which aims to advance geoscientific knowledge of the United Kingdom landmass and its continental shelf by means of systematic surveying, monitoring and research. The BGS headquarters are in Keyworth, Nottinghamshire, but other centres...
(BGS) mapping data.
The service contains the BGS DiGMapGB (Digital Geological Map of Great Britain) Data at three scales: 1:625,000, 1:250,000 and 1:50,000 and uses grey-scale Ordnance Survey mapping as a backdrop for the online mapping facilities. Geology Digimap provides a data download facility in addition to online mapping. This offers the ability to download BGS data for onward use in GIS application software.
In 2010 Geology Digimap a new interface, Geology Roam, was developed to enable slippy map browsing, changes in the opacity of the geology over the backdrop mapping and additional zoom levels.
Marine Digimap
Marine Digimap was released in January 2008 and contains vectorVector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
and raster
Raster graphics
In computer graphics, a raster graphics image, or bitmap, is a data structure representing a generally rectangular grid of pixels, or points of color, viewable via a monitor, paper, or other display medium...
mapping datasets from SeaZone. The service offers Hydrospatial data which is a vector data product created from various hydrographic surveys and data agencies. There is also the Charted Raster dataset, which contains scanned and georeferenced Admiralty Charts from the UK Hydrographic Office.
Digimap for Schools
Digimap for Schools was launched by Baroness Joan Hanham CBEJoan Hanham, Baroness Hanham
Joan Brownlow Hanham, Baroness Hanham CBE is a Conservative member of the House of Lords. She has been a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Communities and Local Government since 2010, and was leader of the Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council from 1989...
, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government
Department for Communities and Local Government
The Department for Communities and Local Government is the UK Government department for communities and local government in England. It was established in May 2006 and is the successor to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, established in 2001...
and Dr Vanessa Lawrence CB
Vanessa Lawrence
Dr Vanessa Vivienne Lawrence, CB is the Director-General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey .Vanessa Lawrence is the Director General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey, Great Britain’s national mapping agency...
, Director General and Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey at Graveney School
Graveney School
Graveney School is a foundation specialist school with Technology College status in the Furzedown area of Tooting, south west London. The Principal is Graham Stapleton and the Headteacher is Keith Barbrook. It teaches years 7 to 11 , with nine classes per year averaging thirty students each. In...
in Wandsworth, London on Wednesday 10 November 2010. The service was offered free to all schools with 11 year old pupils until the end of 2011, as part of the Free maps for 11-year-olds scheme. The service is very similar to Digimap Roam for Higher Education, allowing teachers and pupils to view the majority of Ordnance Survey's mapping products on-line, and print them out.
Technology
Digimap uses both open sourceOpen source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
and proprietary software
Proprietary software
Proprietary software is computer software licensed under exclusive legal right of the copyright holder. The licensee is given the right to use the software under certain conditions, while restricted from other uses, such as modification, further distribution, or reverse engineering.Complementary...
to provide a range of facilities. JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
and Java Applet
Java applet
A Java applet is an applet delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. Java applets can run in a Web browser using a Java Virtual Machine , or in Sun's AppletViewer, a stand-alone tool for testing applets...
mapping tools are used to present data from PostGIS
PostGIS
PostGIS is an open source software program that adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. PostGIS follows the Simple Features for SQL specification from the Open Geospatial Consortium .-Features:...
databases via MapServer
MapServer
MapServer is an open source development environment for building spatially-enabled internet applications. It can run as a CGI program or via MapScript which supports several programming languages . MapServer was developed by the University of Minnesota — so, it is often and more specifically...
and TileCache (Tile Map Service
Tile Map Service
Tile Map Service or TMS, is a specification for storing and retrieving cartographic data, developed by the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. The definition generally requires a URI structure which attempts to fulfill REST principles...
) software. Maps from the TileCache and customised maps specified by the user are created on demand using Cadcorp's
Cadcorp
Computer Aided Development Corporation Ltd. is a British owned and run company established in 1991. Cadcorp has its headquarters in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, U.K. and a development office in London...
GeognoSIS software and presented to the user via an OpenLayers
OpenLayers
OpenLayers is an open source JavaScript library for displaying map data in web browsers. It provides an API for building rich web-based geographic applications similar to Google Maps and Bing Maps...
and MapFish
MapFish
MapFish is an open source web mapping development framework that extends the Pylons development framework and provides support for spatial data. In order to create rich UIs, MapFish aggregates the power of OpenLayers, ExtJS and GeoExt....
interface. In 2010 the EDINA Geoservices Team received a "Highly Commended" in the Innovation & Best Practice (Charitable Status) Award from the AGI, for its implementation of its new technical infrastructure.
In 2007 Snowflake Software's Go Publisher and an Oracle
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
database were added to the software supporting the delivery of Ordnance Survey's OS MasterMap GML
GML
GML may refer to:* Middle Low German , a language used around the North Sea and the Baltic Sea from 1100 to 1600* Gostomel Airport , an international cargo airport, near Kiev, Ukraine* Gradient Multi-Layer nano-film...
data.
The Digimap service is OGC standards compliant and EDINA
EDINA
EDINA is a UK-based data centre , which provides data applications delivered over the Internet and aimed primarily at Higher Education staff and students in the United Kingdom....
is an active member of the Open Geospatial Consortium
Open Geospatial Consortium
The Open Geospatial Consortium , an international voluntary consensus standards organization, originated in 1994. In the OGC, more than 400 commercial, governmental, nonprofit and research organizations worldwide collaborate in a consensus process encouraging development and implementation of open...
, hosting a meeting in June 2006.