Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland

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Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI) is the official mapping agency of Northern Ireland, a part of the United Kingdom.

It is an Executive Agency within the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure in the Northern Ireland devolved administration. The three Ordnance Surveys of Britain and Ireland share a common heritage, the split into three separate organisations being the result of the partition of Ireland in the 1920s.

The vast majority of OSNI's income comes from the licensing of its digital mapping data, which, because of the long history of mapping in Ireland (see Ordnance Survey) is amongst the most detailed and comprehensive in the world. Digital products range from the Large Scale (1:1250 urban and 1:2500 rural) vector database, 1:10,000 raster mapping derived automatically from the L/S vector, 1:50,000 and 1:250,00 vectors, 1;10,000 orthophotography, 1:25,000 leisure maps, the 1:50,000 raster series, 1:250,000 Ireland North raster, street maps of the main conurbations, as well as paper derivatives of all the raster products.

In 2005 OSNI began, with the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI),to digitize the complete set of historical maps dating back to the 1830s. (The earliest comprehensive and accurately surveyed large scale mapping in the world). These are being georectified to match modern mapping projections and are being annotated with points of interest from PRONI's archives.

OSNI also maintains the UK's only common address database, Pointer, which cross matches and validates the address data from the Royal Mail, Valuation and Lands Agency, OSNI and the NI local Authorities,and georeferences each address, as well as giving it a unique identifier. This allows spatial interrogation by customers of the >800,000 addresses in NI using computerised Geographic Information Systems (GIS) combined with digital mapping and the customer's own data.

Supporting the interconnectivity of Geographical Information (GI) for the benefit of the Northern Ireland economy, society and administration is OSNI's primary purpose. In support of this, OSNI also provides the secretariat for Mosaic, the GI strategy for Northern Ireland, which is the first such strategy to be implemented in the UK. In support of Mosaic, OSNI is currently (2006)building a GeoHub for NI, which will be able to host and connect to spatial data from multiple sources, permit a metadata (data about the data) search and, using thin client browser applications, via the Internet, permit multiple data layers to be interrogated, connected, analysed, licensed, downloaded, uploaded and updated.

Starting in Spring 2006, OSNI's own full product range will be available via a map-enabled e-commerce website at www.osni.gov.uk OSNI's surveying technology is based on both photogrammetry and ground survey using total station electronic theodolites in combination with pen (tablet) computers, so that the data is updated directly into the digital format. The photogrammetry (using flight-derived stereoimagery at high resolution) is also used to maintain height models of the topography (Digital Terrain Model or DTM). Computer software permits the draping of aerial photography and/or mapping over such models for the purposes of fly-through or drive-through 3D visualisations. OSNI's Geodesy section maintains the positional reference system of the country to millimetre precision and OSNI's ground stations allow high accuracy use of the GPS system.

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