Ordnance Survey boosts service behind Britain’s spatial address infrastructure

8 December 2006

Ordnance Survey is offering customers of its nationally consistent spatial address infrastructure a powerful series of service improvements from today.

With over 28 million records, OS MasterMap Address Layer 2 already supports applications, including risk assessment, contingency planning, property repair analysis and the routing of commercial delivery services. Each record is validated to published quality standards and uniquely referenced.

Now, customers can go online to order updates of address changes in their data every six weeks through a process called change-only update (COU). This is a cost-effective alternative to a complete resupply of the holding, offering more efficient data management and dramatically reduced processing times.

Ordnance Survey is also offering enhanced specification options regarding the use of unique property identifiers such as the address TOID. And customers seeking to focus on very small areas can now select by hectare (100 m2) in addition to km2 – a significant boost in the accuracy of data choice. Those customers with national sets can opt to receive either COU or full supply on a quarterly basis.

Wessex Water is one company welcoming OS MasterMap Address Layer 2 and the choice of COU data.

“Both of these are essential tools in successful data management,” says Andy Nicholson, Asset Data Manager at Wessex Water. “The combination of change updates to non addressable locations and a nationally consistent dataset with a series of classifications is helping us to understand the make-up of the geographies we work in, so improving what we do.”

The improvements to OS MasterMap Address Layer 2 are contained within the latest release of the wider OS MasterMap online service (version 6.3), which has just celebrated the fifth anniversary of its launch.

“The enhancements are a direct response to customer requirements and feedback,” says Cara Reed, Senior Product Manager at Ordnance Survey. “We have added further attributes to the dataset, including an increasing number of Valuation Office Agency’s business names, increased the supply choices and enabled customers to select their areas with greater precision, which will open up the value of OS MasterMap Address Layer 2 to those customers looking for small discrete areas.”

OS MasterMap Address Layer 2 builds on the success of Ordnance Survey’s other spatial addressing products. It offers significant enhancements such as classifications, building name aliases, geographical addresses, objects without a postal address, such as churches, and multiple occupancy information for flats, halls of residence and so on.

A free cross-reference table allows Ordnance Survey’s data to be linked with other key datasets, including the Royal Mail Postcode Address File (PAF) and the Valuation Office Agency’s Non Domestic Rates and Council Tax data.

For more information about OS MasterMap Address Layer 2,visit www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/addresslayer2

Editor’s Note: Royal Mail and PAF are registered trademarks of Royal Mail Group plc.

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Kate Kemp

Senior Press Officer

Ordnance Survey

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