Opengeoscience: meeting the UK’s geospatial data requirements in geoscience

P Bell1, R Hughes2, K Westhead3

1 BGS, Nottingham, UK

2 BGS, Nottingham, UK

3 BGS, Edinburgh, UK

OpenGeoscience is a new open access web service from the British Geological Survey that provides the public with a wealth of geological information which they can combine with other environmental information to help understand the world around them. Available resources include geological maps for the whole of Great Britain, nearly 50,000 images from its extensive collection of photographs of geological interest, access to many of its databases such as the rock classification scheme and lexicon of named rock units, an open archive of academic papers and research reports, software downloads such as BGS digital field data capture system and educational resources including free geological data for UK universities and online maps for use in higher and further education.

For the academic user community, OpenGeoscience is free for non-commercial private study, research and educational activities. The business user community can take advantage of its availability for the promotion of innovation activities by all. OpenGeoscience aims to open up access to BGS knowledge, information and data and accelerate its exploitation by all potential users.

The BGS has been making geological maps of the UK for 175 years. OpenGeoscience includes the free provision of the BGS Digital Geological Map of Great Britain at the 1:625,000 scale (DiGMapGB-625) for commercial, research and public use. It is available for download in common GIS formats (ESRI and MapInfo formats) and as KML files for visualisation in GeoBrowsers such as GoogleEarth.

OpenGeoscience also announced the release of the BGS Digital Geological Map of Great Britain at the 1:50,000 scale (DiGMapGB-50) for free viewing and access via a web map service (WMS). This is the first time that detailed mapping has been made freely available using the internet. These maps are based on the standard BGS geological map at a scale of 1:50,000. This enables resolution of geological details to about 50 metres on the ground, a world first in terms of releasing country-wide information at essentially street-level scale.

The user community is taking advantage of OpenGeoscience and a number of “mashups” incorporating the DiGMapGB-50 WMS have already been created. ESRI Inc has created GIS projects combining the WMS with its own ArcGIS online services. The Ordnance Survey (the UK’s national mapping agency) has made much of its detailed mapping data available online via its OS OpenSpace service and users are already combining these datasets with the BGS services. Other applications have seen users integrating the DiGMapGB-50 WMS with information on Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and cave information.

This presentation will touch on the strategic framework for knowledge exchange within the BGS and how OpenGeoscience fits into a balanced ‘Freemium’ model. It will discuss the user community for OpenGeoscience and how the service aims to meet their needs. The technical methods of its implementation will be explored and plans for the future unveiled.

OpenGeoscience is available at www.bgs.ac.uk/opengeoscience