/location /location /location – exploring Ordnance Survey Linked Data

Ordnance Survey now have some linked data available here. This data includes information about the local authority and voting regions of Great Britain. Included in this data are the names (and official names as set out by Statutory Instrument where applicable), census code and area in hectares of the region. Also included are topological relationships between the administrative areas. These allow users to do qualitative spatial queries on the data.  So for example, the data contains information about which regions are contained by other regions. Bordering information is given between regions of the same type (e.g. between consituencies). There is one exception to this where additional bordering information is given between counties, unitary authorities, districts and metropolitan districts [1].

So what can you do with the data? First you can simply explore it in your browser. For example look at the URI for The City of Southampton:  http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/id/7000000000037256. As you can see this contains a list of the regions Southampton borders, contains and overlaps [2].

It is possible to perform free text searches on the data here. The results are returned as an RSS feed. Try it out – type the name of the region you are looking for in the first search box. Typing in Southampton gives three results: the unitary authority The City of Southampton and two westminster constituencies Southampton, Test and Southampton, Itchen.

The interesting queries, however, are done at the SPARQL endpoint located here.  I’ll give a handful of SPARQL queries to get you going. You will need to add this at the top of each query:

PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#&gt;
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#&gt;
PREFIX xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#&gt;
PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/&gt;
PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#&gt;
PREFIX admingeo: <http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ontology/admingeo/&gt;
PREFIX spatialrelations: <http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ontology/spatialrelations/&gt;

So first of all I can ask for a list of the types of the things in the data:

select distinct ?type
where
{
?a rdf:type ?type .
}

Seeing the data mentions Unitary Authorities I can ask for a list of all unitary authorities and their official names:

select ?a ?name
where
{
?a rdf:type admingeo:UnitaryAuthority .
?a admingeo:hasOfficialName ?name .
}

I can now issue a topological query: find me all westminster consituencies contained by the unitary authority Southampton:

select ?a ?name
where
{
<http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/id/7000000000037256&gt; spatialrelations:contains ?a .
?a rdf:type admingeo:WestminsterConstituency .
?a foaf:name ?name .
}

or find me the regions (and their names) that contain the district of Winchester:

select ?a ?name
where
{
?a spatialrelations:contains <http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/id/7000000000017754> .
?a foaf:name ?name .
}

This query finds me the regions (and their name and type) that border Winchester:

select ?a ?name ?type
where
{
<http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/id/7000000000017754 > spatialrelations:borders ?a .
?a rdf:type ?type .
?a foaf:name ?name .
}

This query returns me a list of counties, and the county electoral divisions contained within them along with the names of the county and county electoral division:

PREFIX owl: <http://www.w3.org/2002/07/owl#&gt;
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#&gt;
PREFIX xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#&gt;
PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/&gt;
PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#&gt;
PREFIX admingeo: <http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ontology/admingeo/&gt;
PREFIX spatialrelations: <http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/ontology/spatialrelations/&gt;

select ?ced ?county ?cedname ?countyname
where
{
?county rdf:type admingeo:County .
?ced rdf:type admingeo:CountyElectoralDivision .
?county spatialrelations:contains ?ced .
?ced rdfs:label ?cedname .
?county rdfs:label ?countyname .
}

One final note for people wanting to do mashups with this data. If you wish to see the boundary on a map then the area code and unit ID attributes can be used in the OS OpenSpace API to display the boundary.

So for example, for Southampton (http://data.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/id/7000000000037256) the area code is UTA (for unitary authority) and the unit ID is 37256. These values can be used as follows:

/*here we set-up the our variable called ‘boundaryLayer’ with the strategies that we require.
In this case, it is its ID and type i.e. Unitary Authority */
boundaryLayer = new OpenSpace.Layer.Boundary(“Boundaries”, {
strategies: [new OpenSpace.Strategy.BBOX()],
admin_unit_ids: [“37256”],
area_code: [“UTA”]
});
//then we add the bounadry to the map
osMap.addLayer(boundaryLayer);
//this effectively refreshes the map, so that the boundary is visible
osMap.setCenter(osMap.getCenter());

to display the Southampton boundary using the OS OpenSpace API. See http://openspace.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/openspace/support.html for more details. An example of the output can be seen here.

Happy SPARQLing…

[1] – if you are (rightly) confused about the geography of Great Britain then there is a handy glossary here.

[2] – the regions that contain Southampton will be added shortly.

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