Ordnance Survey Ireland recognised for their contribution to National Mapping at Esri’s International User Conference, San Diego

Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi) have been recognised as leaders in their field, with a Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award from Esri. The award was made on July 12th at a special ceremony at Esri’s International User Conference in San Diego. The awards ceremony pays homage to Esri customers from around the world who have done outstanding work with GIS (geographic information systems).

OSi received the award for its innovative application of technology, data collection, geospatial information visualisation, and thought leadership through GIS in the field of national mapping, in particular for their highly progressive “GeoHive” Initiative.

"The SAG Awards provide a great opportunity to showcase all the outstanding achievements of our users," said Jack Dangermond, Esri founder and president. "The Special Achievement in GIS Award recognises exemplary organisations implementing spatial analytics technology to change the world. Highlighting the good work of users—in industries ranging from commerce to government—benefits the entire GIS community, and that's very valuable."

Working with Esri Ireland, Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi) launched their online mapping service “GeoHive” to help unlock Ireland’s vast reserves of geospatial data by making trusted, location based information easy to find, interpret and share, from one place, using any device, for the first time. GeoHive is a free web app that supports the recovery of the Irish economy and paves the way for public and private sector organisations to save millions of Euros through sharing authoritative data off a centralised infrastructure. Ordnance Survey Ireland (OSi), already had an online map viewer, which attracted over 1.5 million unique visitors a year. However, the technology behind this web service was becoming outdated and could not deliver digital cartography to tablet and mobile devices. OSi therefore launched an ambitious project to replace its existing map viewer with a new online portal that would improve the user experience, as well as make third party, public sector data easily accessible from a single location and provide new value-adding services for members of the public.

OSi completely redeveloped and modernised its online mapping capability using Esri’s ArcGIS platform to create GeoHive (www.geohive.ie ). For the first time, users can access current and historical OSi maps on their mobile phones and tablets, as well as create maps, save them and share them instantly with colleagues using any device. Most importantly, as a classic portal, GeoHive combines OSi mapping with data from a wide range of public sector partners, to create an authoritative national Spatial Data Infrastructure which combines over 142 layers of third party data from 35 public sector bodies and presents them seamlessly to the end user from a single site.

Colin Bray, Chief Executive Officer at OSi, stated that “We are delighted to receive the Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) award. I am personally delighted for the joint OSi/Esri Ireland team as this marks and acknowledges a very strong relationship and a focus on innovation and continuous process improvement in the delivery of our products and services”.