UK Ordnance Survey launches next iteration of its Linked Data Service

UK Ordnance Survey launches n…

Portal Admin

Published on: 03/06/2013 News Archived

Today, Ordnance Survey announced the launch of its renewed Linked Data service.

Ordnance Survey, the UK's national mapping agency, has published three OS Open Data products as Linked Data: the 1:50 000 Scale Gazetteer, Code-Point Open and the administrative geography for Great Britain taken from Boundary Line. A combined OS Linked Data dataset combines these products into one database to support more flexible data access.

The renewed Linked Data Platform of the UK mapping agency is said to have the following improvements:

Developed a data hub that provides access to all our Linked Data datasets, with integrated search to enable anyone to easily locate resources of interest.
Embedded OS OpenSpace maps to show the geographic location chosen.
Separate datasets, which will allow you to narrow down your searches. For example, if you are looking for postcode information, you can query just the Code-Point Open Linked dataset.
Improved metadata for each dataset such as publication dates, licensing terms and coverage.
SPARQL 1.1 compliant endpoints for all datasets, which provide more functionality for querying our Linked Data.
Redesigned search API based on the OpenSearch specification and with support for geography-based queries.
Support for the Open Refine Reconciliation API, which will allow you to more easily link your data with ours.
All new API documentation and interactive tools for all API’s, including integrated example resources and queries.

The Ornance Survey has given every postcode in Great Britain a web identifier (an HTTP URI) of the form

http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/id/postcodeunit/{POSTCODE}

An example of a URI is

http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/id/postcodeunit/IP186TA (the post code of the Southwold harbour).