Surrey live with digital mapping

Surrey Police is one of the first forces in the UK to go live with OS MasterMap Topography and Integrated Transport Network (ITN) Layers for operational command and control as part of their Intergraph computer-aided dispatch system.

Upgrading from Land-Line to the OS MasterMap Topography Layer and from OSCAR to the OS MasterMap ITN Layer with Road Routing Information (RRI) will provide the force with tools to ensure that its resources are deployed in the best possible way.

The detail that is afforded by the OS MasterMap Topography Layer – Britain’s most detailed digital map with over 400 million features, including the position of individual buildings, gardens and street furniture – will help operators respond to 999 calls as well as provide a valuable tool for operational planning and incident response. Surrey will now be able to be more specific about the location of an incident, the potential risks nearby and attribute any feature with their own information.

The OS MasterMap ITN Layer contains 99.21 per cent of road links and more than 740,000 named roads across the country. RRI is intelligent data that accompanies ITN showing, for example, narrow streets, one-way roads and road bridge weight restrictions, so these obstacles can be avoided. The ITN Layer with RRI is the most detailed transport-mapping network available and should prove a valuable resource to officers both in a command-and-control environment and in the field.

Greg Brown, Surrey Police’s applications and support manager, was eager for the service to reap the benefits of Ordnance Survey’s detailed datasets. He said: “OS MasterMap Topography Layer and OS MasterMap ITN Layer offers us the detail and accuracy you’d expect from Ordnance Survey, but that was not the only feature that attracted us.

“The ability to attribute certain features or places with our own information gives us an excellent instrument for command-and-control operations and incident planning and response.”

Peter ter Haar, product director at Ordnance Survey with responsibility for OS MasterMap, said: “We’re delighted that Surrey Police have become one of the first police authorities in the country to strengthen its command-and-control functions using our data.

“One of OS MasterMap’s key strengths, apart from its depth of detail, is its interoperability with a wide variety of datasets, allowing for complementary datasets such as the OS MasterMap Topography Layer and OS MasterMap ITN Layer to be overlaid and utilised simultaneously.”

Mr Brown concluded: “Adopting OS MasterMap Topography Layer and OS MasterMap ITN Layer has enabled Surrey Police to bring its command-and-control-system mapping into the 21st century with clearer, more up-to-date maps. A database-driven approach to its implementation will enable us to reuse this data in other business areas, gaining maximum benefit for the investment made.”