Geomni UK Newsletter
December 2020


As we near the end of a difficult year for everyone I am very pleased with the way the Geomni UK team has coped with the changes, continued to support our customers, and enhanced our products and services. I am particularly proud of the COVID support work we undertook, and I know that this is continuing to be valuable to clients.

This newsletter showcases some of the highlights of the year including the new edition of our UKBuildings database with national coverage, our pavement width mapping of London, and integration of new OS Open Identifiers into our products.

I would like to thank our customers and partners for their support during the year and look forward to 2021 when I hope we can start to meet again.

Season’s greetings and stay safe,

Tom
 
As we near the end of ‘a year to forget’ we thought it would be good to reflect on some of the positive work we have done at Geomni UK over the last 12 months. This includes:

Geomni UK's response to the COVID-19 Crisis

In response to the situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Geomni UK made our unique building and land-use data freely available to any Government, Health, Emergency Service or Research organisation dealing with the COVID-19 response.

Over 30 organisations received our data as part of this initiative and we are continuing to support several of these.
Rapid response to the crisis

The Verisk guiding principles to Serve, Add Value and Innovate were highlighted in our response to a specific query at the start of the COVID crisis. A London Borough asked if our data included information on pavement widths. UKMap includes a pavement classification but no width information.

Using FME software and support from 1Spatial, the team quickly came up with a methodology to classify pavement widths. This resulted in data, like that shown above, being supplied to London Authorities within a few days of the initial request. It is pleasing to know that this information has been of significant benefit to London Authorities.
Significant enhancements made to our UKBuildings data

This year we expanded our UKBuildings database so that building location (footprints), height, use and residential type classifications are available for the whole of Great Britain and the Belfast urban area in Northern Ireland.

The update extends and enriches the current classifications of buildings, including age, use, residential type and structural information, with the addition of data from Energy Performance Certificates, new Ordnance Survey (OS) Open Identifiers and other open data.

We also made our UKBuildings data accessible via an API (Application Programming Interface). The UKBuildings API allows developers to integrate detailed property level data into applications and services.

As a result of these enhancements, it is now easier than ever to learn more about the detailed characteristics of buildings across Great Britain from a single data source.
Geomni UK support Missing Maps and Verisk Volunteer Week
 
Every year, Verisk employees around the globe spend a week giving back to their community during Verisk Volunteer Week.

The Geomni UK team participated in a Missing Maps Mapathon, an initiative where participants from around the world remotely 'map' un-mapped areas to help humanitarian organisations provide aid to some of the planet's most vulnerable people.

Geomni UK are proud sponsors of Missing Maps events that are held regularly in Cambridge, but this was a chance for the whole team to get involved and get involved they did, managing to map around 1500 buildings in an area of Burkina Faso!
Geomni data made available to the academic community via EDINA

After a successful pilot project, EDINA added our UKMap, UKBuildings and UKLand databases to their Digimap portal. ‘Geomni Digimap’ is free at the point of use for staff and students at subscribing higher and further education institutions and research councils.

Users can create, view and annotate Geomni data online and/or download the data for further manipulation within GIS or CAD packages. For a summary of what's available, EDINA have also published a YouTube video, which you can watch here.
 
It has been a difficult year for us all, but we look forward to continuing to work with our customers, and to bringing you new and improved services in 2021.

If you have any questions or queries for the Geomni UK team, please get in touch.