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Enhancing data it already holds about buildings, Ordnance Survey is now sharing information about 40 million roofs that will provide valuable insight for emergency planners and frontline services tackling incidents where green roofs and solar panels require a different response.
The Ordnance Survey National Geographic Database (OS NGD) holds information about buildings, including their use, construction material, age, number of floors and address detail. All of this helps emergency services manage risk in their area.
The release of roof data for 40 million properties across Great Britain has revealed that 5% of roofs have solar panels with the highest concentration in Scotland. Stirling has 15% of the 1.3 million roofs in the OS dataset.
The roof data was almost entirely captured using automated feature extraction, utilising Machine Learning methodologies in some processes.
Knowing what material a roof is made out of is also useful to the fire and rescue services and now OS provides data on the predominant roof materials for 25 million addressable buildings. The data reveals that 92% of roofs are made of tile/stone/slate with small numbers using waterproof membrane/concrete, fabric, glass/polycarbonate, green roof, metal or thatch. Although in the case of thatched roofs, OS says that just 0.1% of buildings still have thatch with the highest concentration in Sidmouth, East Devon.
OS says that identifying a roof shape – whether a roof is flat or pitched – and its aspect (the direction it faces eg north or north east) can also help identify where there could be greater flood risk or damage during storms.
In addition to the release of roof data, OS has also mapped pedestrian and vehicle access points to major public buildings and added this o the OS NGD This will, it adds, enhance emergency planning and response times in the event of major incidents, as well as improve situational awareness, and help wheelchair users navigate key public buildings more easily.
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.
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