What is Digimap?
Digimap is a collection of EDINA services that deliver maps and geospatial data from a number of national data providers, including Ordnance Survey and the British Geological Survey. Data is available either to download to use with appropriate application software such as GIS or CAD, or as maps generated by Digimap online.
A wide range of data is available for England, Wales and Scotland with a smaller range available for the Isle of Man. Geological data is also available for Northern Ireland.
Each Digimap collection has a different licence; you can see details and FAQs in their licences and terms of use .
Software
Lancaster University provides a wide range of software to help you use and present Digimap data, including ArcGIS.
Printing
Colour printers and printers which can handle large formats are available on campus - for up-to-date information see Lancaster Answers.
More information about the service is available here.
Ordnance Survey Collection (current map data)
Digimap Ordnance Survey collection contains maps at scales ranging from 1:1,250 up to 1:750,000 available for making maps online or for download. There are scanned raster maps which are digital versions of Ordnance Survey's paper maps as well as vector maps at a range of scales including OS MasterMap® the most detailed large scale mapping.
The service includes many other products from Ordnance Survey including postcodes, administrative boundaries, a gazetteer of place names and digital terrain models.
Offers a range of historical Ordnance Survey mapping data products from 1843 to 1996. These include
Offers a range of Land Cover Map data products.
These digital raster datasets, derived from satellite data collected by the Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper, provide classification of land cover types at a 25m resolution for the years of 1990, 2000 and 2007. Classifications include sea and inland waters, bare, suburban and urban areas, arable farmland, pastures and meadows, rough grass, grass heaths and moors, bracken, dwarf shrub heaths and moorland, scrub, deciduous and evergreen woodland and upland and lowland bogs.
Geology Digimap is part of the Digimap Collection of on-line mapping and data delivery facilities. Users can view maps through their web browser, save maps for printing and download the geological map data for use in geographical information systems.
What geological maps and data are available?
The following data are available as both maps generated online and as data to download:
Geology Digimap provides:
Marine Digimap is part of the Digimap Collection of on-line mapping and data delivery facilities. Users will be able to view maps through their web browser, save them for printing and download the marine and coastal data for use in geographical information systems.
Marine Digimap provides the following:
Aerial Digimap provides access to some of the highest quality aerial photography available for Great Britain, created and licensed by Getmapping plc. Access is convenient and on-demand to a range of interactive tools, allowing interrogation and analysis of the data online and offline. Data is available to view, query and print in Aerial Roam and available to search and retrieve in Aerial Download.
Lidar Digimap offers detailed Lidar data from the Environment Agency through a convenient, on-demand web interface. It also offers vertical aerial photography.
Lidar data is a very accurate model of the earth’s surface. The data is captured by firing very rapid laser pulses (thousands of times per second) at the ground surface. By examining the laser energy reflected back from the ground the surface is captured as a dense cloud of 3D points. These points are then converted in to highly detailed terrain models of the surface of the earth and by examining the reflections from both the ground surface and the vegetation canopy it is possible to derive both Digital Terrain Models of the bare earth surface (DTM) and also Digital Surface Models (DSM) that show the vegetation canopy.
Vertical aerial photography is an airborne mapping technique, which uses a high-resolution camera mounted vertically underneath the aircraft to capture reflected light in the red, green, blue and for some datasets, near infra-red spectrum. Images of the ground are captured at resolutions between 10cm and 50cm, and ortho-rectified using simultaneous LIDAR and GPS to a high spatial accuracy. The Environment Agency has been capturing vertical aerial photography data regularly since 2006. Vertical aerial photography has been captured on a project by project basis each ranging in coverage from a few square kilometres to hundreds of square kilometres. Historic data are available for some areas where we have carried out repeat surveys. Photography can be captured in all survey conditions, including incident response where it is used to derive flood outlines. The photography is supplied as a raster dataset in ECW (enhanced compressed wavelet) format as either a true colour (RGB), near infra-red (NIR) or a 4-band (RGBN) dataset.
Uses of Lidar data are highly varied, from use in the creation of visual effects for virtual reality and film projects to archaeology, forestry management, flood and pollution modelling. Because it is so much more detailed than “traditional” digital terrain models, in some datasets down to 25cm resolution, there is a wealth of additional uses for the data. Looking at lines of sight for rural developments, mobile phone and wireless broadband signals amongst other things is easier and more accurate using Lidar data because of the inclusion of vegetation in the model.
All the Lidar data included in Lidar Digimap is available under the Open Government Licence, and access is provided for free with a subscription to Aerial Digimap.
Global Digimap provides access to global datasets in cartographic styles and downloadable formats that are useful to you. The service provides the following:
Explore a range of demographic data with this exciting Digimap collection. Society Digimap provides a wealth of census and socio-economic data for Great Britain. The processing required to visualise Census and other demographic datasets can be a barrier to use for many interested in the value of the datasets. By providing these datasets as layers to visualise along with high quality Ordnance Survey data, users can access the rich information to gain valuable insights for their areas of interest without the need to learn how to use a GIS.
Digimap’s Pilot Collection provides access to data that we are trying out and evaluating against demand from users. As such, the data included in Pilot Digimap are subject to revision and update. If you need to rely on the persistence of data within Pilot Digimap for your research or teaching please get in touch with us beforehand to discuss.
Pilot Digimap is free at the point of use for staff and students at subscribing higher and further education institutions and research councils. Details of how to subscribe and access the service can be found under the ACCESS tab.
Pilot Digimap primarily comprises two applications, one for creating maps online, the other for downloading data which enables further analysis and investigation in other packages:
Geomni Digimap provides access to:
UKMap
A modern, highly detailed, feature-rich mapping database of Greater London. Its unique, innovative design offers users a flexible choice of integrated map features within a single geographic information source. Based on 1:1,000 scale topographic mapping, UKMap accurately locates buildings, garages, property boundaries, roads, trees and a multitude of other features. UKMap is being utilised by a number of key commercial and public organisations such as Metropolitan Police, Thames Water, Arup, London Fire, TfL and many more.
UKBuildings
A unique database created and regularly updated to help you understand the age, structure, characteristics and use, of commercial, public and residential buildings across GB.
UKBuildings is available for the whole of Great Britain and the Belfast urban area in Northern Ireland. Ther datae includes detailed information on building locations and 3D footprints, height, building use, and residential type classifications. The most detailed information is available in more than 500 urban areas.
UKLand
A national land information database providing a detailed consistent breakdown of the use of land across the UK. The data includes a basic, high-level land data classification (man-made, natural, agricultural or water) and a more detailed set of 27 classes. These are made up of the following:
Natural areas (sand dunes, rockscapes, heath and moorland…)
A range of agricultural types (mainly crops, mixed-use, vineyards, glasshouses…)
Woodlands (Deciduous, Coniferous, Mixed…)
Built environments (A range of urban densities, Business Parks, Industrial, Retail Parks…)
agCensus Digimap offers access to a time-series database of grid square based data derived from the regular Agricultural Censuses of England, Scotland and Wales.
The Agricultural Census is conducted in June each year by the government departments dealing with Agriculture and Rural Affairs for Scotland, England, and Wales. Farmers are surveyed in each year via a postal questionnaire, with the farmer declaring the agricultural activity on their land. In Scotland the census covers all major agricultural holdings, but in England and Wales a stratified sample of holdings are surveyed. Data for non-surveyed farms is extrapolated from previous years and trends on comparable farms. The respective government departments publish information relating to farm holdings for recognised geographies for c.150 items of data. Algorithms developed by EDINA convert small area data provided by the government agencies into grid squares of 2, 5 or 10 km.
Ordnance Survey maps and data within Digimap are protected by Crown Copyright. They may be used by authorised users for educational purposes and limited administrative/external use, including teaching resources, assignments, theses, conference papers, academic and journal articles and location maps or directions for an educational establishment. The following acknowledgement should be used: © Crown Copyright and Database Right [insert current year]. Ordnance Survey (Digimap Licence)
British Geological Survey maps and data within Digimap are protected by copyright owned by the Natural Environment Research Council. They may be used for education purposes including teaching resources, assignments, theses, conference papers, academic and journal articles. The following acknowledgement should be used: Geological Map Data BGS © NERC [insert current year].
