Ordnance Survey (OS) has released data on over 40 million roofs in Great Britain into the OS National Geographic Database (OS NGD), which could benefit sectors from sustainability and energy to insurance and property, through providing insight into roof shape, aspect, material, presence of green roofs, and solar panels.
The roof data was almost exclusively captured using automatic feature extraction, which uses some Machine Learning (ML) methodologies, improving the efficiency of data processing as well as enhancing the currency and breadth of the information provided by OS.
Alongside roofs, the OS NGD also hosts information on building use, their material, age, number of floors, address count, and basement presence, which are all available in the OS NGD. These can be cross-referenced with other OS NGD themes such as Address and Land Use to unlock valuable insights that can support projects and businesses across the public and private sector.
OS’s new roof data includes information on roof shape and aspect, which can help assess flood risk of insurance purposes, confirm retrofitting and planning suitability, and roof aspect can determine the predominant orientation in eight directions (north, northeast, east etc.).
Information on roof material will help support multiple sectors to help identify fire risks and support green energy solutions, such as supporting solar panel projects.
New data on access points to key public buildings will help emergency planning and response times, improve situational awareness, and help wheelchair users navigate key public buildings more easily.
John Kimmance, chief customer officer for OS, said: “This is the most significant collection of new and existing data for buildings in the OS National Geographic Database since it was created in 2022. With the addition of the new roof data, OS can support so many different sectors with achieving key insights and deliverables — from insurance and property to local authorities under pressure to meet biodiversity net gain targets. And we’re not stopping here — more building datasets are in the pipeline for future release.”
Other data in this release includes building heigh enhancements, streetlights, tunnels, three additional land use site descriptions (beaches, wind farms, military training areas), and additional information in the OS NGD Geographical Names theme.
The new location data has been released as part of the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA). The PSGA is a contract between Government Digital Service, managed on behalf of the UK government, and OS for the provision of geospatial data and services to the emergency services and wider public sector organisations.
