As mentioned at Geoforum earlier this year, we’re currently working hard on a new version of Digimap Roam. The new-look application will bring Digimap Roam, the online mapping tool in the Digimap family, bang up to date with the latest web technologies available. Whilst the functionality will remain the same, the look and feel of the […]
Category Archives: Geology
Digimap 2014-15 Print Maps & Data worth over £77 Million
Image Courtesy of Images_Of_Money
EDINA has again calculated the commercial cost of all the data downloaded and maps created for printing in all Digimap Collections for the period August 2014 to July 2015. This was done per subscribing institution and then totalled; the grand total is approximately £77.25 million. This estimate is a conservative one because we reduce the quantity of data downloaded by 60% to account for duplication of usage. When all the maps printed and data downloaded were included in the calculation (i.e assuming users would continue to take their own data and maps, and not share them) this total rises to almost £128.5 million.
Click to enlarge image
We know that some data is downloaded multiple times within an institution, for example by students during a class exercise or by individual researchers working on the same study site. We found that on average only 40% of the data taken from Digimap over a period of time was unique within an institution. We believe that if institutions were paying commercial rates for their data they would be more likely to download it once and circulate it to those who need it; this is why we reduce the amount of data included in our calculation. However, there is considerable variation between institutions as to how much is unique; those that do more research or are smaller in size tend to have a greater proportion of unique downloads (i.e. fewer people downloading the same areas, for example, for the same study site), so we have included the 100% figure as a ceiling value.
Click to enlarge image
In total, over the past five academic years over £435 million (£248 million at 40%) worth of print maps and data has been served up from Digimap to subscribing institutions. The steep increase in 2013-14 was caused by more Ordnance Survey products being downloaded and printed than ever before and also by the high commercial costs of several products added to the Geology Digimap service. The upward trend in the total commercial costs has continued in 2014-15, though at a steadier rate, however we are seeing the same year on year growth in the number of logins to the service.
How the Costs are Calculated
Click to enlarge image
The costs used in our calculations for the data are sampled from the list prices published by a range of data suppliers, and include any relevant multipliers or discounts declared publicly on their websites.
Each data product is assessed individually because many are priced differently. The obvious example is OS MasterMap, which is charged on the basis of the TOID density per square kilometre. TOID density changes according to the area mapped. Each product is price-checked annually against a range of suppliers.
We calculate the values on a per product / per institution basis, with the data preparation and licensing charges assigned only once per product, per institution (rather than per data request). Many of the data collections are commercially licensed based on the number of users who have access to the data; with increasing numbers of users a multiplier is applied to a base cost. We applied the relevant multipliers according to the number of active registered users for each Collection at an institution.
We capped data costs at the price of national coverage for each product, making it impossible to assign greater cost for any one product than it would be to supply the entire dataset for use by a whole institution.
The values for the print maps (including saved maps in all Roam applications) are calculated by finding the cheapest commercially available map prints from websites such as eMapsite, NLS and FiND.
What We Didn’t Include
Click to enlarge image
No monetary values were assigned to the millions of screen maps that are produced from Digimap.  The value calculated also doesn’t take into account any of the help materials, training courses and support facilities that are all part of the Digimap service. Many commercial service providers may charge an additional fee for this part of the service.
All OpenData products (both prints and data downloads) are excluded from the calculation, despite the advantages of producing them from Digimap over other websites.
However, the biggest saving that isn’t included in these value calculations is your time. We only charged the data supplier’s preparation and licensing costs once per product or order, in line with each company’s policy where it applied. In reality there would be many orders occurring throughout an academic year as new research questions are raised. This all costs time, time spent submitting data requests and waiting for them to return; time to create and manage a repository for spatial data; time to acquire the knowledge on how to use the data you receive. Commercial providers mitigate these delays but may charge fees for the convenience. By providing 24 hour access to high quality data, customisable maps and detailed support materials through purpose built interfaces, Digimap saves this time and expense for its users.
Digimap avoids students, academics and support staff having to wait longer than necessary for the information they need and the instruction on how to use it.
We will be sending out each institution’s data cost calculations to Digimap site representatives. If you are interested in the commercial costs of the maps and data your institution has been using please contact your site representative. If you are unsure who your site representative is, please contact us:
- email: edina@ed.ac.uk
- phone: 0131 650 3302
Digimap Data Updates: December 2015
A number of key datatsets have been updated in Digimap this December in several of the collections.
Of particular note are the updates to the Marine collection. The Charted Raster product from SeaZone is now available in two versions: ‘Full Marginalia’ and ‘No Marginalia’. Users can select the version after adding the product to the basket in Marine Download.
The ‘No Marginalia’ version has all extra information round the map (e.g. north arrows, scale bars, inset maps etc.) removed and replaced with transparent areas. This makes it ideal for use in GIS software allowing you to pan across adjacent charts without this information obscuring the map data.
 Furthermore the Charted Raster .tif files are now supplied with .tab files for accurate positioning in MapInfo.
The tables below lists all the datasets that have been updated in each collection together with the publishing date for each one.
Ordnance Survey Data Download
| Product Name | OS Published Date |
| Boundary-Line | October 2015 |
Geology Download
| Product Name | BGS Published Date |
| Boreholes |
|
Marine Download
| Product Name | SeaZone Published Date |
| HydroSpatial One | August 2015 |
| Charted Raster (all scales) | August 2015 |
If you have any questions about the dataset updates or Digimap please contact us:
- Phone: 0131 650 3302
- Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
Digimap 2013-14 Print Maps & Data worth £65.4 Million
Image Courtesy of Images_Of_Money
As part of our work to demonstrate the value for money of the Digimap Collections, EDINA has calculated the commercial cost of all the data downloaded and maps created for printing. We calculated the values per institution for the period August 2013 to July 2014 then totalled them; this came to approximately £65.4 million. This estimate is a conservative one because we reduce the quantity of data downloaded by 60% to account for duplication. When all the maps printed and data downloaded were included in the calculation (i.e assuming users would continue to take their own data and maps, and not share them) this total rises to over £107 million.
Click to enlarge image
We know that some data is downloaded multiple times within an institution, for example by students for a class exercise or by researchers for specific study sites. We found that on average only 40% of the data taken from Digimap over a period of time was unique within an institution. We believe that if institutions were paying commercial rates for their data they would be more likely to download it once and circulate it to those who need it; this is why we reduce the amount of data included in our calculation. However, there is considerable variation between institutions as to how much is unique; those that do more research or are smaller in size tend to have a greater proportion of unique downloads, so we calculated the 100% figure as a ceiling value.
In total, over the past four academic years over £306 million (£170 million at 40%) worth of print maps and data has been served up from Digimap to subscribing institutions. The steep increase in 2013-14 was caused by more Ordnance Survey products being downloaded and printed than ever before and also by the high commercial costs of several products added to the Geology Digimap service.
How the Costs are Calculated
Click to enlarge image
The costs used in our calculations for the data come from the list prices published by data suppliers, and include any relevant multipliers or discounts declared publicly on their websites.
The data costs we calculated are done on a per product / per institution basis, with the data preparation and licensing charges assigned only once per product, per institution (rather than per data request). Many of the data collections are commercially licensed based on the number of users who have access to the data; with increasing numbers of users a multiplier is applied to a base cost. We applied the relevant multipliers according to the number of active registered users for each Collection at an institution.
We capped data costs at the price of national coverage for each product, making it impossible to assign greater cost for any one product than it would be to supply the entire dataset for use by a whole institution.
The values for the print maps (including saved maps in all Roam applications) are calculated by finding the cheapest commercially available map prints from websites such as eMapsite, NLS and FiND.
What We Didn’t Include
Click to enlarge image
No monetary values were assigned to the millions of screen maps that are produced from Digimap. Â The value calculated also doesn’t take into account any of the help materials, training courses and support facilities that are all part of the Digimap service.
No OpenData downloads or maps created from OpenData are included in the calculation, despite the advantages of producing them from Digimap rather than other websites.
However, the biggest saving that isn’t included in these value calculations is your time. We only charged the data supplier’s preparation and licensing costs once per product or order, in line with each company’s policy where it applied. In reality there would be many orders occurring throughout an academic year as new research questions are raised. This all costs time, time which the data suppliers will charge for or that institutional staff would have to take to submit requests for data and time for staff to create and manage a repository for spatial data.
With 24 hour access to high quality data and maps through a purpose built mapping and data download interface, Digimap does all this work for its subscribers.
Over the coming weeks we will be sending out each institution’s data cost calculations to Digimap site representatives. If you are interested in the commercial costs of the maps and data your institution has been using please contact your site represenative. If you are unsure who your site representative is, please contact us:
- email: edina@ed.ac.uk
- phone: 0131 650 3302
Digimap 2012-13 Print Maps & Data worth nearly £40 Million
Picture courtesy of Images_Of_Money
As part of our work to demonstrate the impact of Digimap, EDINA has calculated the commercial value of all the data downloaded and maps created for printing. We calculated the values per institution for the period August 2012 to May 2013 then totalled them; this came to approximately £39 .5 million. This estimate is a conservative one as we reduce the quantity of data downloaded by 60% to account for duplication. When all the maps printed and data downloaded were included in the calculation (i.e assuming users would continue to take their own data and maps, and not share them) the value rises to nearly £71 million.
Click to enlarge image.
We know that some data is downloaded multiple times within an institution, for example by the students in a class exercise or for specific study sites. We found that only 40% of the data taken from Digimap over a period of time was unique to an average institution. We believe that if institutions were paying commercial rates for their data it would be more likely that they would try to download it once and then circulate it to those who need it; for this reason the value calculations only include 40% of the total. However, there is considerable variation between institutions as to how much is unique; those that do more research or are smaller in size tend to have a greater proportion of unique downloads, so we have included the 100% figure as a ceiling value.
In total, over the past three academic years over £190 million (£100 million at 40%) worth of print maps and data has been served up from Digimap to subscribing institutions.
How the Costs are Calculated
Click to enlarge image.
The costs used in our calculations for the data downloaded come from the data suppliers, and include any relevant multipliers or discounts made publicly available on their websites.
The data values are calculated on a per product / per institution basis, with the data preparation and licensing charges assigned only once per product, per institution. Many of the data collections are licensed based on the number of users who have access to the data; with increasing numbers of users a multiplier is applied to a base cost. We applied the relevant multipliers based on the number of active registered users for each collection at an institution. SeaZone data is provided commercially through a third party website; we picked the closest match possible to the data we provide though this does have a lower cost, again making the estimates conservative.
We capped data values at the price it would cost to take national coverage of each product, making it impossible to charge more for any one product than it would to supply the entire dataset for use by the whole institution.
The values for the print maps (including saved images in Carto and Ancient Roam) are calculated by finding the cheapest available commercial map prints from websites such as eMapsite, NLS and FiND. These values are updated every time we calculate the values.
What We Didn’t Include
Click to enlarge image.
No monetary values were assigned to the millions of screen maps that are produced from Digimap; we couldn’t find a comparable site! Also, the value calculated doesn’t take into account any of the support materials, training courses and help desk facilities that are all part of the Digimap service.
No OpenData downloads or maps created from OpenData are included in the calculation, despite the advantages of producing them from Digimap over other websites.
However the biggest saving that isn’t included in these value calculations is your time. We only charged the data supplier’s preparation and licensing costs once per product or order, in line with each companies policy. In reality there would be many orders occurring throughout an academic year as new research questions are raised. This all costs time, time which the data suppliers will charge for or that institutional staff would have to take to put in requests for data or to create and manage a repository for spatial data.
Digimap does all this work for its subscribers along with providing a high quality mapping interface, 24 hour access to expensive high quality data and maps.
Over the coming weeks we will be sending out each institution’s values to Digimap site representatives. If you are interested in the value of the maps and data your institution has been using then get in touch with them. If you are unsure who your site representative is then please contact us:
- email: edina@ed.ac.uk
- phone: 0131 650 3302