Product details

Feature type

OS Open Names is comprised of a single feature type: Named Place.

The data provides a nationally maintained view of named places for Great Britain containing the following types of named places:

• Populated places, including cities, towns, villages, hamlets, other settlements and suburban areas

• Transport network, including named and numbered roads, and sections of named and numbered roads

• Postcodes

The product represents named places as point geometries primarily for the purpose of naming and locating these features. Additional contextual location information is provided to aid with the identification of features. Links are also given to other gazetteers, including DBpedia and GeoNames.

Standards

The named places are discussed in this document and in the Technical Specification in INSPIRE-compatible terms with reference to the INSPIRE Data Specification on Geographical Names. INSPIRE is the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe; the INSPIRE Directive is designed to ensure that the spatial data infrastructures of the Member States of the European Community are compatible and usable between member states to improve decision-making and operations.

For consistency, the attribute naming convention used in OS Open Names takes into consideration the attribute names in other Ordnance Survey products.

Coordinate reference system

The dataset uses the British National Grid spatial reference system. The National Grid coordinates are to a resolution of 0.1 metre. This is the resolution of the source data. Positions are described as Easting and Northing coordinates in units of metres.