A group of Saudi mapping experts recently visited Ordnance Survey's head office in Southampton, as part of efforts by Britain's national mapping agency to share expertise and exchange information with similar organizations from across the globe.
Other nations, including Brazil, China, France, Hungary, India, Kenya, Korea, Switzerland and The Netherlands, have all sent representatives over the past year to Ordnance Survey's head office in Southampton to seek and exchange expertise in a variety of subjects.
Ordnance Survey deals with surveying and mapping techniques, as well as expertise in project management and evaluation, systems design, staff requirements, equipment purchase and commissioning, technical and management training, marketing and product development as well as business change processes.
Ordnance Survey's showed the Saudi delegation its new digital map of Britain, OS MasterMap. The dataset features reference numbers to every building and field, railway, signal lights and free-standing letter boxes, to allow the easy linking and analysis of information from many different sources.
"Detailed knowledge of the land is central to the needs of every country. It underpins decisions made on all aspects of life, from emergency services to environmental protection," says Ordnance Survey's Clare Hadley.
The mapping agency is now organizing a major conference of national mapping organizations, set to take place in Cambridge next summer. The Cambridge Conference for National Mapping Organizations is a four-yearly gathering of mapping chiefs from all over the world. The conference takes place at St John's College, Cambridge during the week of 21-25 July 2003.
Ordnance Survey is Great Britain's national mapping agency. It is responsible for creating and updating the master map of the entire country, from which it produces and markets a wide range of digital map data and paper maps for business, leisure, education and administrative use. The public-sector agency operates as a trading fund with an annual turnover of around £100 million. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
