What is the OS National Geographic Database and why does it matter to utilities?

The OS National Geographic Database (OS NGD) is Ordnance Survey’s detailed digital representation of the geography of Great Britain. It contains more than half a billion geographic data features covering buildings, land, transport, water, addresses and administrative areas. For utilities, its importance lies in the detail behind those features.

Traditional mapping might identify a building and its location. OS NGD can provide richer attribution about that building, while its interconnected themes allow organisations to examine relationships between properties, transport networks, water, land and other features. Updates can also be made much more frequently than with many previous OS datasets. That creates several practical opportunities for utility companies.

• Network planning specialists can use more detailed information about buildings, addresses and transport infrastructure when assessing network expansion or new routes.

• Asset managers can place their own infrastructure within a richer picture of the surrounding environment – and do so with total confidence, knowing that currency isn’t an issue.

• Address lookup and building information can help utilities understand customers served by a network, while transport and access information supports maintenance and field operations.

The same data can support risk analysis. Bringing utility assets together with information about land, water, buildings and other geographic dara UK features can help identify where infrastructure may be exposed to flooding, development, environmental change or other sources of disruption.

OS NGD is also increasingly important because Ordnance Survey’s product portfolio is changing. Some OS datasets are being replaced by NGD-derived products, meaning utilities need to consider how existing GIS processes, data models and applications will work with the newer information.

The opportunity, though, goes beyond replacing one dataset with another. Greater detail, richer attribution and improved currency allow utilities to ask more specific questions of location data: which assets may be exposed to a particular risk, which properties could benefit from network investment, or how is the environment around critical infrastructure changing?

Idox Geospatial is an Ordnance Survey strategic partner. We help utilities access OS NGD in the format and delivery method to suit their existing systems. More importantly, we help identify where additional detail can improve network planning, asset management, customer insight and infrastructure risk analysis – so migration becomes an opportunity to make better use of location data, rather than simply a data replacement exercise.

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