EDINA is very pleased to announce that Digimap Roam will be updated on Thursday 17th May 2018 to the new version currently available as beta. This change will apply to all Digimap Collections. The beta version has been available since November 2017 and as a result of feedback we have continued to improve it, adding […]
Category Archives: Service Availability
Lidar Digimap now included with Aerial Digimap
We have now reached the end of the Lidar Digimap Preview. We hope that everyone who has used the service has found it a great way to access the Lidar data available. From now on the service will continue to be available to Digimap Users whose institution subscribes to the Aerial Digimap service. Find out […]
New Digimap Licence Agreements
We are now at the start of a new academic year and Digimap has new licence agreements in place for the Ordnance Survey, Geology and Historic Map and Data Collections. You may have noticed already that you have been asked to agree to the licence again when you logged in. This is because some of the terms are different and you are required to agree to these new terms prior to accessing the data within the service.
When you login you will notice the Licence Agreements button at the top right of the home page.
Clicking on this will allow to you to view the licences you have agreed to and to agree to those you have not yet agreed to.
If a Collection has a new licence, the applications (e.g. Roam and Data Download) in that Collection will also appear grey. By trying to access an application which has a new licence, you will automatically be taken through the process of agreeing to it if you have not yet done so.
All you need to do is accept the licence and restate your purpose for using the service (which may or may not have changed since you agreed to the previous licence) and you will have access to the service once more.
If you have any questions or need any help or guidance have a look at the Agreeing to Licences for Digimap Collections section half way down the following help page:
Or send us an email:
- Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
Old Historic Download withdrawn Friday 11th December
Old Historic Download
EDINA will be withdrawing the old Historic Download on Friday the 11th of December. With most people now using the new Historic Download we have taken the decision to switch off the old version to free up resources. The new interface contains all the same data but allows you to take multiple products and revisions in a single order. Existing users’ Download History from the old interface will NOT be available to reorder from the new interface so please make sure you have made all the necessary orders in the old interface before the 11th.
New Historic Download
Please note that if you want a definitive list of published dates for the maps you download from the new interface, it is available in the contents.txt file delivered in your zip folder with your data. This text file has the details for every tile / sheet of map data you have taken.
The old Historic Download was the last remaining download interface that was different to the other collections, so now every collection uses the same interface to retrieve data for use in CAD or GIS software.
Service Availability 26 – 28th Jan – new registration system release
New users will not be able to register for Digimap from 4pm on 26th Jan and all Digimap services will be unavailable all day on 27th Jan. Normal service will resume by 9am on 28th Jan. This is to allow us to release a new Registration System.
New registrations for Digimap (using the current system) will be closed from 4pm Monday 26th January.
Digimap will then be unavailable all day on Tuesday 27th January, while we release the new system.
The service will be available again from Wednesday 28th 9am.
We apologise for the inconvenience caused. Due to the significant changes required to release the new system, we must close access to Digimap during this time.
We urge you to create any maps or download data that you may need during the period of service unavailability in advance.
The new registration system will allow users to register and instantly access Digimap Collections. New registrations will no longer have to be manually approved by the EDINA Helpdesk and then processed overnight. This will speed up access for new users significantly.
Existing registered and active users will not notice any change.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact EDINA on edina@ed.ac.uk or 0131 650 3302.
More details about how the new system looks and works will be posted on the Digimap blog in the New Year.
Digimap Service Maintenance: Tuesday June 10th.
Digimap Service Disruption: 28th January 2014
All Digimap services will be unavailable between 08:30 and 10:00 on Tuesday 28th of January, and should be considered “at risk” for the rest of the morning. We are carrying out an essential database upgrade, this affects logging into the service so there will be no access until the work is complete. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Environment Digimap Launched: Free till July 2014
EDINA and Jisc are pleased to announce the launch of a new Digimap Collection, Environment Digimap.
This new collection offers land cover map data from the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH). Environment Digimap is a subscription service; however, it will be available free of charge until 31 July 2014. After this period a subscription fee will apply per institution.
Environment Digimap offers two facilities: mapping through Environment Roam, and the ability to download data through Environment Download. The data available, CEH’s Land Cover Map products, provide a snapshot of land cover for each of the years 1990, 2000 and 2007. There are raster datasets available at 25m and 1km resolutions for each year and a vector version of the 2000 dataset. The data are in a range of formats depending on the year. More details are available in the Environment Digimap Help Pages: CEH Products Available
How to get access…
To use this service for free your institution needs to subscribe, this is free till the end of the 2013 – 14 academic year and can be arranged via the Jisc Collections website:
Jisc Collections: Environment Digimap
If your institution doesn’t subscribe the Environment Digimap button on the home page will be grey. Contact your Digimap site rep and they will be able to help arrange your institutions subscription: List of Digimap Site Reps
If you have any questions about Environment Digimap, please contact us:
- Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
- Tel: 0131 650 3302
Digimap Carto: A last look before we turn off the lights
At 11:00 am access to Digimap Carto will be closed and by 12:00 noon it will have made its last map. Carto was at the cutting edge of web mapping technology for several years, delivering Ordnance Survey maps to thousands of users while Google was still just a search engine. The high quality EPS and then PDF print files it produced meant that staff, students and researchers could print out maps of anywhere in Great Britain and were no longer limited to their library’s collection.
Carto over the years 1998 to 2013
As time passed Carto could easily keep up with the latest offerings from MultiMap (later bought by Microsoft and eventually becoming Bing Maps) and Google Maps. It had more advanced tools and much better data in the form of OS MasterMap, so as the Java updates got more frequent we all put up with the software being a bit unreliable for a few days before we could issue a fix. However after 2011 the number of Java updates ramped up significantly and the changes became more difficult to accommodate. Once anti-virus software began seeing Carto as a potential threat and preventing it operating we decided that maintenance was unsustainable.
EDINA realised that continuing to support Carto would be too costly in terms of developer time spent fixing problems rather than improving and enhancing the service. In the meantime the rest of the world had become much more accustomed to viewing maps online in a web browser; EDINA’s other mapping service, Roam was able to take on much of what Carto was offering without confusing or frustrating its users.
Some recent changes to the capabilities of the web mapping platform that Roam uses meant that we could finally offer a Carto replacement without the need for any software to run on the end user’s computer. These changes have allowed us to withdraw Carto and let Roam to take on all the mapping duties for Digimap. We can now get on with the business of all those improvements and enhancements we have been wanting to make. We hope you will like the changes that we are aiming to have in place this August:
Digimap Roam Interfaces: Important changes this summer
Farewell Carto!
Digimap’s Boundary & MasterMap Download facilities closed
Both MasterMap Download and Boundary Download have been withdrawn today 28th May 2013.
The functionality and datasets offered by MasterMap Download and Boundary Download are now available through the standard Data Download application. This can be found in the Download OS mapping data section of Digimap’s Ordnance Survey Collection.
Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns about this or anything else:
- Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
- Tel: 0131 650 3302