About Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey has provided accurate, reliable and detailed geographic data for more than 200 years. Today we are a dynamic, modern organisation employing 1,490 people. We are justifiably proud of our rich heritage, yet committed to leading the way in technological innovation. As the recognised market leader in our field, our name is synonymous with mapping expertise. At the heart of our organisation is a vision that, together with our partners, we will be the content provider of choice for location-based information in the new information economy.
Within Ordnance Survey Data Collection & Management collect data for Great Britain. The database contains more than 440 million different topographic features mapped in detail as well as different types of data, including addresses, transport networks and imagery. It is used to provide complete national large-scale digital data, approximately 5 000 changes are made every day and are available to our customers through regular updated releases of OS MasterMap and other derived products. Our production resource includes a 300-strong field surveyor workforce, we also have a photogrammetric surveying and data enhancement operation based at our Southampton head office. These field and head office operations focus on our high-value and complex datasets. Our operational capability is completed by the addition of a significant private sector contractor capacity that delivers value by undertaking large volumes of photogrammetric sweep updates in rural and mountainous areas.
In 2009 we upgraded the technology that delivers the OS Net GPS real-time correction service. New base station receivers now enable this service to broadcast additional corrections for the Russian GLONASS satellites and will also support the future European Galileo constellation. OS Net has become the authoritative high-accuracy positioning service for Great Britain and, in addition to Ordnance Survey’s own surveying operations, is widely used by both the private surveying industry and research communities.
