Ordnance Survey OpenData
Case Study : Ordnance Survey OpenData
The Ordnance Survey's award-winning Linked Data exemplar is powered by the Talis Platform Managed Services
At a glance:
- Talis Consulting helps the Ordnance Survey publish mapping datasets for Great Britain
- The publication sparks a range of award-winning and innovative third party applications
- Ordnance Survey data hailed fundamental to unlocking greater government transparency and new economic and social value
- Ordnance Survey data hosted and served by the Talis Platform Managed Services
When Ordnance Survey – Great Britain’s mapping agency – published a number of its mapping products as Linked Data back in April 2010, it was not merely reflecting the need for greater government transparency. By making their mapping and geographic information freely available for download, Ordnance Survey (OS) created a Linked Data exemplar that gave developers the power to create award-winning and innovative applications, and in the process, garnered praise from no less than Sir Tim Berners-Lee.
Linked Data comes of age
Part of Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s original version of the web was that it should be used to publish, share and link data, in much the same way that web pages are linked together using hypertext.
The expression ‘Linked Data’ is used to describe this method of exposing, sharing, and connecting data on the web, and although the term was coined by Sir Tim himself back in 2006, it wasn’t until 2009 and the emergence of data.gov.uk (a drive to publish and share government data to increase accountability and innovation) that a commitment to opening up OS data was made. This meant that the OS’s mapping and geographic information (such as administrative boundaries and postcode data) which had previously have been subject to royalty payments and restrictions on re-use, would have to be made available for free.
From research to reality
On 1 April 2010, Ordnance Survey launched OS OpenData, the service that made a selection of mapping datasets for Great Britain available for commercial or non-commercial use without restriction, including three key datasets as Linked Data. This meant that third party developers could (for example) include scrollable and scalable Ordnance Survey maps within their applications, or use the OS OpenSpace API (Application Programming Interface) to create interactive web maps.
For John Goodwin, a Research Scientist at Ordnance Survey who’s been working with Linked Data and associated Semantic Web technologies since the start of the millennium, the launch of OS OpenData represented the chance for his innovative research team to showcase the fruits of their labour and to demonstrate how Linked Data had moved from the realm of technology enthusiasts into the real world.
“Around 2002, the OS research department was encouraged to adopt a more ‘blue-sky’ approach” explains John, “which meant we no longer saw ourselves as a resource which would only be called upon to address day-to-day issues. Instead, we started to investigate how technologies that were at the time seen as ‘way off’ (such as the Semantic Web, ontologies and data integration) could be used to describe ‘stuff’ in the OS data..
“These different projects started to converge around the same spot, and it soon became clear that Linked Data was the key technology that the wider business could understand, and appreciate the potential benefits in. This coincided with the Linked Data work going on as part of the data.gov.uk project.”
The ubiquity of location data
The launch of the OS OpenData service has not only helped to promote government transparency; it also underpins a range of independently developed software applications, all of which require geographic information.
As John explains, “Location is very important – 80% of data has a location element to it. One of the main drivers for this project was that we knew geographic location would be an important hub for linking data together.”
Both Sir Tim and Professor Nigel Shadbolt (the Linked Data champion responsible for setting Open Data standards across the public sector) saw location data as a “means to putting everything in context”, and the key to unlocking greater government transparency and new economic and social value. In fact, this is already happening, with several innovative applications using electoral boundary information and postcode data to enhance their applications.
One of the more innovative examples is from the Windsor and Maidenhead Council DataTap website, which won the Media Guardian Innovation Award for best use of data. The site uses OS OpenData and the OS OpenSpace API to instantly visualise a range of council information including population, councillor’s allowances and crime statistics. Such visualisations, which work by joining and analysing data from a number of different sources (in this case the OS OpenData and data from the Council’s IT infrastructure) help make the data more accessible – and more meaningful – than if it were presented in tables or spreadsheets, or scattered across multiple council web pages.
“We decided to let Talis take care of the hosting and serving, so all we had to do was worry about making the data available.”
John Goodwin, Research Scientist,
Ordnance Survey
Underpinned by Talis Platform Managed Services
Ease of re-use lies at the heart of linked data. Since OS’ Linked Data conforms to established standards, linking with other datasets was possible from the outset. So it’s no surprise that it is already being used by organisations such as the BBC and data.gov.uk.
Like Ordnance Survey’s Linked Data, the data.gov.uk project is also underpinned by services provided by Linked Data specialists Talis Consulting, who delivered data management, modelling consultancy, and training on the core technology. It was the success of this high profile (and time critical) project and Talis’ thought leadership within the wider Linked Data community, that lead to the partnership with OS, giving John the chance to work with Talis’ renowned Linked Data specialists.
With the April 2010 deadline approaching and the OS wanting to release three key datasets as Linked Data, the benefits of Talis’ Linked Data SaaS (software as service) offering were self-evident. As John explains, “Every district, ward, county and postcode within the OS OpenData portfolio, was assigned a unique URI (universal resource indicator) so that when clicked, the user could see useful information about a specific region, and also see how it related to other areas.
“There were two ways of getting this information online. One way would be to invest time and money setting up our own infrastructure, or we could we use a managed service that did all the heavy lifting for us. We decided to let Talis take care of the hosting and serving, so all we had to do was worry about making the data available.”
Furthermore, the OS has a solution that scales if their needs grow. As a subscription based service, the OS weren’t hamstrung by a huge investment up front, and were able to bring their initial product quickly to market.
Imagine the possibilities…
Like Sir Tim and Professor Shadbolt, John is excited about the economic potential of technologies built upon Linked Data principles. “Not all the OS Data is freely available, but by releasing some data, it gives people the opportunity to play, experiment with the technology, and hopefully you can take those people with you in the future. As more Linked Data is published by other people, the opportunity to create interesting applications based on combinations of these datasets grows. With location such a key information hub for so many of these, imagine the possibilities…”
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