Digimap 2014-15 Print Maps & Data worth over £77 Million

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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.

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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

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

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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

Digimap Screen Maps Made 2010 to 2015

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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

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Digimap 2013-14 Print Maps & Data worth £65.4 Million

Money and Calculator

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.

Digimap Data and Print map values from 2010 to 2014

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

Porportions of Digimap Collections Values 2010-2014

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

Digimap Screen Maps Made 2010 to 2014

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.

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

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Marine Digimap: New Data, New Downloader

Marine Digimap has updated datasets in its brand new Marine Download facility.  The new interface provides a single place to get both Hydrospatial data and charts. The Hydrospatial data is now the newer Hydrospatial One dataset from SeaZone which also provides access to much higher resolution gridded bathymetry data, one arc second instead of six.  The Charted Raster dataset has been replaced with Hydroview Charts; these are still the same scanned Admiralty Charts though they are much more recent and include some small scale charts covering whole oceans (still not for navigation though!).

Version of Marine Downloader Launched in July 2014

Marine Download overlays listMarine Download works in the same way as Data Download, Environment Download and Geology Download; you select your area, pick your products and download the  data. The main difference is with datasets as these don’t all form continuous coverage of the UK Coastal waters. We have therefore included overlays that show where the tiles of each dataset can be found. These are very useful when choosing your data, just open the “Show Grid / Overlay” menu on the right of the map and pick the overlay for the data you are selecting.

Remember there can be a lot of overlap between the Hydroview Charts and also large areas with no data, you will get all the charts that present for the area and scale band that you choose. If there is no data for the area you have selected then you will not be able to add anything to the basket, if you try you will get an error message informing you of the products with no coverage.

For a full description on how to use the new interface, have a look at the help page: How to use Marine Download

List of Hydroview Charts in Marine DownloadThe data in Marine Download is broken into three categories, Hydrospatial, Hydroview Charts and Bathymetry. In the Hydrospatial category the same themes as before can be found, the Hydroview Charts are broken up into categories depending on their scale including those extra charts with wider ocean or global extents.

The old interfaces for downloading data, Hydrospatial Download and Charted Raster Download, will be withdrawn in the coming weeks, if you have teaching materials that include them then please update these as soon as possible.

 

If you have any questions about the new download or the withdrawal of the old interfaces then please get in touch:

  • Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
  • Phone: 0131 650 3302

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