Stevenage, UK, May 24, 2016 – British GIS software developer, Cadcorp, has provided software support for three free-to-use data products from the national mapping agency of Great Britain, Ordnance Survey: OS Open Map - Local; OS Open Roads; and OS Open Rivers.

Support for the new data products was added in a recent service release of the Cadcorp Spatial Information System (SIS) software suite. The three vector-based datasets provide a nationally-consistent and high-level cartographic view of buildings, road networks and rivers and waterways throughout Great Britain.

According to the Ordnance Survey, OS Open Map - Local provides the most detailed level of buildings in the OS OpenData suite.  OS Open Roads is a connected road network, and contains all classified roads (such as motorways and A & B roads) as well as officially named unclassified roads. OS Open Rivers is a generalised open water network showing the flow and the locations of rivers, streams, lakes and canals. The three products have been designed to be used together.

OS OpenData products are free to view or download for use in both personal and commercial applications and are used by many Cadcorp customers to provide a background against which to view their own business data. However, the recently supported data sets offer more than a static graphic backcloth as they describe identifiable features in the landscape. This opens up extensive possibilities to Cadcorp customers, allowing, for example, users of Cadcorp’s Map Modeller software to run network analyses on the Open Roads data. Users of Cadcorp’s free desktop product, Map Express, can access all of the OS OpenData, change the style of the OS maps, determine which types of features to display or highlight, perform spatial and attribute queries, and undertake thematic mapping.

Martin McGarry, managing director of Cadcorp, underlined the significance of supporting these free mapping products. “Many of our customers in Great Britain depend on mapping from our national mapping agency, and Cadcorp SIS has always had industry-leading, wide-ranging and easy-to-use support for Ordnance Survey data. Cadcorp is an active member of the OS Insight programme and as such has early access to new product developments at the OS. We have used this position to make it as easy as possible for our customers to read OS data formats and to import this data into Cadcorp SIS. As we have done with all data formats, we have enabled our users to access OS OpenData products using simple user interface such as drag-and-drop. Our users don’t have to use data conversion packages, don’t have to restructure geometry, and don’t have to implement complex styling rules themselves. Cadcorp SIS takes care of all of these issues and builds fully structured, fully styled data at no extra cost to the user. Furthermore, we have also added the capability for our users to upload these three OS OpenData products to widely-used spatial databases with a single, simple, interactive loader program. After loading the data, an easy-to-use Wizard connects to the loaded data, again with all of the styling rules automatically applied”.

The new service release also includes support for OS MasterMap Topographic Layer V9 Schema. This will provide 76 new descriptive term attributes giving even greater detail to this flagship large-scale mapping product and means that Cadcorp SIS users will continue to benefit from access to the latest OS detailed map format styled per OS guidelines.

A new version of Map Express which supports the three Open Data products, and the new OS MasterMap Topographic Layer V9 Schema, can be downloaded from the Cadcorp website here

About Ordnance Survey

Ordnance Survey is Great Britain’s mapping agency, providing the most accurate and up-to-date geographic data, relied on by government, business and individuals. By maintaining and enhancing one of the world’s most detailed geographic referencing frameworks, our data is at the heart of policy making and allows for better exchange of data between citizens and government

About Cadcorp

Cadcorp is a British software development company focused on geographic information system (GIS) and web mapping software. It offers a complete suite of products - the Cadcorp Spatial Information System® (Cadcorp SIS®) - addressing all phases of spatial information management. Cadcorp SIS is available worldwide through a network of Cadcorp partners and through a direct sales team in the UK and Ireland. To find out more, please visit www.cadcorp.com

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Richard Spooner
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Cadcorp
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