Ordnance Survey maps UK on a giant database

Agency is building the world's largest geospatial database

Ordnance Survey is building the world's largest geo-spatial database that will form the foundation of its future activities.

The database will store images and information covering all of Great Britain, accurate to two centimetres, creating a 'master map' of the entire country.

Ordnance Survey is consolidating several databases into one centrally managed system, called the Maintenance database, that will hold around four terabytes of data.

The information will be used as the basis of all of the organisation's future products, whether digital or paper-based.

'The idea is we collect the data and we'll be able to use it for other products, so we collect it once and use it for lots of things,' said Dave Lipsey, head of infrastructure at Ordnance Survey.

'We hope it will be running before 2004. We are prototyping it just now, but it's a huge project and it takes all aspects of the way we do business and how we handle different databases.'

Ordnance Survey is upgrading other parts of its IT infrastructure to accommodate the new database, and is working with Computacenter to upgrade its network, replacing an ageing 3Com system with a Cisco-based environment.

'We are hoping this investment will last at least five years and we expect to see a return on investment within four years,' said Lipsey.

The agency is also deploying software to run a real time kinematic (RTK) global positioning system (GPS) network. The RTK network will allow surveyors to generate more precise information.

'The surveyors will be collecting much more accurate data and the maintenance database will be responsible for generating the products. Customers will get much more accurate data,' said Lipsey.