Ordnance survey

Ordnance Survey is the national mapping agency for Britain.

Its origins date back to the mapping of the Scottish Highlands following the rebellion in 1745. Since 1 April 2015 Ordnance Survey (OS) has operated as Ordnance Survey Ltd, owned by the Secretary of State for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

It describes its aim as ‘..to provide mapping that informs, guides and inspires. Our vision is to reveal our ever-changing landscape in extraordinary detail, giving the most comprehensive view of Britain.’

It provides location-based products such as paper maps, digital map data, online route planning and sharing services and mobile apps. It has mapped the location of every fixed physical object in Great Britain to within one metre accuracy and its team of around 300 surveyors and two aircraft produce 10,000 updates to its system every day.

Ordnance survey paper and digital maps can be useful as a basis for creating site plans, location plans and block plans for proposed developments, and for illustrating pre-development layouts for the purpose of planning applications, building regulation applications, preparing design proposals, feasibility studies and so on.

For more information go to https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/

[edit] Related articles on Designing Buildings Wiki

• Block plan.
• Ordnance Datum.
• Origin point.
• Geographic information system GIS.
• Global positioning systems and global navigation satellite systems.
• Location plan.
• Site plan.