The OS NGD switchover creates new opportunities: How do you take advantage?

The Ordnance Survey National Geographic Database (NGD) marks the most significant evolution in UK geospatial data in over a decade. Far more than a replacement for legacy products like OS MasterMap, it’s a rethink of how location data can support real operational decisions.

With its fundamental developments in data features, access, and consumption, NGD unlocks uses that weren’t possible before.

Over 70 Exclusive Data Features

NGD introduces a host of new attributes not available in OS MasterMap, offering enhanced insight for planning, analysis, and operations. These include:

• Building age and construction type.
• Basement presence.
• Roof characteristics including material, shape, aspect, solar panels, and green roofs.
• Building height.
• Vehicle and pedestrian access points to key public buildings such as hospitals and shopping centres.
• Site categories such as beaches, military training areas, and wind farms.
• Infrastructure features including tunnels and streetlights
• Crowd-sourced local place names and landmark identifiers

Granular Access

NGD can be consumed as a service and as traditional datasets. It supports flexible, scalable access methods to suit a variety of workflows.

• Tile and API Access
  Choose between traditional tile downloads or OGC-compliant APIs.
• Custom Areas
  Define geographies that match your project areas, with the ability to update or modify as things evolve.
• Select + Build
  Extract only the feature types and attributes you need in specific locations. For example, retrieve only the buildings in Ipswich with solar panels, minimising your data processing.

Flexible Consumption

NGD moves away from rigid product bundling. Instead, its licensing model gives you full control over what you use and pay for.

• Recipes and Features
  Bundle only the data relevant to your needs. Licence by feature type and geography while only paying if that feature is present in your selected area.

NGD’s structure supports high-volume analytics while keeping costs focused on actual usage.

Huge operational advantages

The NGD fundamentally improves what organisations can do with geospatial data.  For example, it vastly develops:

• Property-based insight: Detailed building data enables improved asset management and risk reduction.
• Risk analysis: The ability to analyse assets at a national scale and assess differential risks with greater precision.
• Field teams and onsite work: Accurate, location-specific data helps increase first-time visit success rates through better pre-visit planning.
• Transport planning: Deeper insight into transport infrastructure, including pedestrian and vehicle access points, supports hybrid transport models and minimises the need for manual assessments.
• Network management: Rich feature-level detail helps organisations manage infrastructure more proactively.

Talk to us about how NGD can give your team a real operational edge.

From underwriting risk to routing field teams, it enables faster, more accurate planning based on contemporary and attributed data. Features like building footprints, access points, roof data, unlock uses that weren’t possible with legacy datasets.

As one of the longest standing and most experienced OS partners, miso is uniquely positioned to help get the most value from NGD. Talk to us to unlock operational advantages with NGD by calling 0121 232 8000 or clicking here.