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This document contains additional theoretical information related to Points of Interest. All users will find the Product Information document useful and informative.
This product information document describes the main features of the product, suggests how customers can use the data and explains how the data is supplied. Everyone reading this document will gain an understanding of the key concepts of the data and the benefits an organisation can obtain from using it within location-based applications.
The Points of Interest product is a comprehensive location-based directory of all public and privately owned businesses, educational institutions and leisure services in Great Britain. It contains over four million records, which are sourced and quality-checked from over a hundred leading listing suppliers. It’s updated four times a year, so you’ll always be working with current information.
For the public sector, Points of Interest lets you identify gaps in services and analyse changes in city centre retail space over time. This helps you to maintain a quality environment for residents, shoppers and visitors.
Using the Points of Interest product, you can:
Identify places by their use and function as well as by their postal address or location. Each record also contains a telephone number, web address and brand, where appropriate.
See commercial addresses for organisations across Great Britain, including phone numbers and web URLs for major businesses. Over 45% of Points of Interest records are businesses.
Use the detailed company classifications linked to addresses to conduct detailed competitor and site analysis to help you identify the potential location of your next high street outlet.
Access information on the following themes: accommodation, eating and drinking, commercial services, attractions, sport and entertainment, education and health, public infrastructure, manufacturing and production, retail and transport.
As each feature is provided with a national grid coordinate, it can be visualised as points on a map using a geographical information system (GIS).
Common applications for which customers are already using Points of Interest include:
Citizen information services
Distribution and provision of facilities and infrastructure
Emergency planning
Location-based services
Tourism
Each feature comes with a set of attributions that can be manipulated and analysed within a GIS or database so that customers can customise the data and learn more about the facilities within their chosen geographic areas.
Points of Interest is created and maintained by PointX, an independent company in the joint ownership of Ordnance Survey and Landmark Information Group. Ordnance Survey is the sole ‘data only’ distributor for Points of Interest.
PointX collects data from around 140 suppliers, including Ordnance Survey. It receives updates from these suppliers on an ongoing basis. The suppliers are chosen for being the most authoritative source for the particular type of feature they supply, and for the quality and completeness of their data. It should be noted however, that for many types of features there are no absolute definitive source, nor can any list of the types of features found in Points of Interest be said to be complete. Points of Interest therefore comes with a number of indicators as to the likely currency and positional accuracy of any given set, which should be taken into consideration when using the data.
PointX runs verification checks, provides National Grid coordinates, and classifies each feature. The data is sent quarterly to Ordnance Survey who distributes it to customers. Ordnance Survey manages the customer relationship.
The suppliers are responsible for providing the data to PointX in a manner and timescale agreed between them.
Coverage is Great Britain.
Points of Interest customer orders are currently supplied via a Secure URL. The current size of a full supply is about 1Gb.
Points of Interest is supplied to customers quarterly in March, June, September and December, incorporating any updates made by the revision programme.
Links to the Points of Interest classification scheme pages are included below
The primary use of Points of Interest is to allow identification of different facilities, resources or functions within the built and natural environment.
Points of Interest data can be used within a table format, such as a spreadsheet or a database, to create gazetteer or list-type applications that allow people to search for a particular facility or resource. These applications make use of the attributes supplied for each feature and depend on the application system having a searching or querying facility that the customer can supply with search criteria.
To achieve the greatest possible value from the data, it is best viewed and analysed within a GIS. The combination of Points of Interest with topographic mapping gives context to the features, which cannot be derived from using it within a table or spreadsheet. Depending on the functionality of the GIS, it also provides the opportunity to:
Group the features into other subsets of data.
Combine the data with your own complementary datasets or with other Ordnance Survey products.
Customise the appearance of the Points of Interest features to suit your requirements. To get customers started, Ordnance Survey provides a suggested set of symbols, which are available from the Links and downloads section of the Points of Interest Product Support page on the OS website.
Extend the queries on the attributes by using a spatial element.
Points of Interest can be displayed within a GIS by using the Easting and Northing coordinates to display each feature’s geographic location as a point. The National Grid coordinates that accompany each feature allows it to be displayed as a point, in its correct position with regards to the National Grid and any other map based on the same reference system.
The simplest way to display the product is to render all points with a single colour and shape, as shown below. These can then be labelled with the classification code to understand what each point represents. By providing the context of the physical environment within which the Points of Interest features exist can add another dimension of meaning to the data. It allows a spatial understanding of the features to develop.
Points of Interest is completely customisable in terms of the way you choose to symbolise the points. The way in which the data appears on a screen is likely to be a combination of your wishes and the functionality of the system being used to display the points.
Most GIS have tools that provide options for rendering data on screen. Ordnance Survey has developed a set of symbols to use with the Points of Interest dataset, so that customers can render the data very quickly. This suggested set of symbols is available to view and download from the Links and downloads section of the Points of Interest Product Support page on the OS website.
Using a symbol set that makes use of Category level of classification means that the viewer can understand the information quickly. Comparing the figures above showing Points of Interest data rendered with a set of the supplied symbols, it is possible to get an idea of the range and type of features that are in this area without querying the attribution.
The symbol sets are supplied in:
Black and white bitmaps
Colour bitmaps
TrueType font
Refer to the Points of Interest symbology page for the colour symbols for the 52 available categories and their classes.
The real benefits of Points of Interest within a GIS can be seen when displaying the features over some backdrop mapping. This adds real-world context to the features. Points of Interest features are best used in combination with a large-scale product such as OS VectorMap Local, an example of which is used in the 1:3 000 image below. This allows both clarity and the ability to derive additional value from both products. A slightly smaller scale backdrop, such as OS VectorMap District, can also provide the necessary context. An example is shown below.
Whilst it is possible to view the data at any scale, the smaller the scale, the harder it is to see what real- world feature the point represents. There are problems of points either being difficult to distinguish from each other or, if they are set to enlarge as the map is zoomed out, they can disappear behind each other, as shown in the VectorMap District 1:10 000 image.
Classification provides structure to the data which helps when storing it. It provides a way of ordering the data, a means of visualising it, and a way for customers to find the features they are interested in quickly.
Points of Interest has its own classification scheme with each feature assigned to a Class within the system. The classification is central to the Points of Interest dataset as it provides a hierarchical structure to the data that makes it efficient to store in a computer system and easier to search. It also provides a means of subdividing the data so that customers can order only the features they want.
The classification was created by PointX. It is designed to be comprehensive, intuitive and easy to use. It provides the necessary level of detail to be useful and flexible without being so complex that it becomes difficult to use the product in applications. There are three levels of classification: Group, Category and Class.
Level 1 comprises nine Groups and provides the broadest categorisation. Level 2 comprises 52 Categories which are broken down into more than 600 Classes to form the third level of the classification scheme. This is the most specific level of classification. The full classification is given in a separate Classification Scheme page. Over the life of the product, some Classes have been changed, added or merged with other classes, which is why numbers in the tables are not sequential.
Having three levels of classification enables customers to make general searches. For example, at the Group level, education and health, specific searches at the Category level, such as primary, secondary and tertiary education, or specialist searches, such as special schools and colleges, at the Class level.
You can order Points of Interest at either the Group or the Category level. Features are allocated a classification based on either:
A classification provided by the original data supplier.
Where no classification is provided, PointX uses its experience and understanding of the dataset itself, or elements within it, to allocate a classification.
Classifications make it easy to use database or GIS tools to search, analyse and display features based on their Class. When used in conjunction with the attribution, it is possible to compile, for instance, a list of the names and addresses of estate agents within a given geographic area. In the figure below, the classification has been utilised to display all Bus Stops within an area using the classification code 10590732.
This breaks down as:
Group: 10 = Transport Category: 59 = Bus Transport Class: 0732 = Bus Stops
The structure of Points of Interest can be described as relational in nature. Each Group has one or more Categories below it. Each Category in turn has one or more Classes related to it. This type of structure is used extensively in database management technologies as it provides a way of storing the data in a way that reduces the amount of space required and speeds up the retrieval of information. Having this classification, therefore, provides an opportunity to store the data in an efficient way.
Supplier data is supplied to PointX in a wide variety of formats. Some of the data is supplied without grid references and specific attribution, therefore efforts are made to supply this data. The success of this identification is measured by the accuracy flags such as positional accuracy and match indicators.
Ordnance Survey data and specialised geocoding software is used to achieve positional accuracy and to provide a confidence level indicator for each record. Data that cannot be given coordinates due to insufficient location or address detail are not supplied in the Product. It is very important that customers take the positional accuracy value of the feature into account when using it in applications.
The positional accuracy falls into one of the following categories:
Positioned to the address or location, usually within the building footprint.
Positioned to an adjacent address or location for non-addressable features.
Positioned to the road within the address or location.
Positioned within the geographical locality.
Typically, most records are positioned on or adjacent to the address or location of the feature. A very small proportion of records are positioned to the road within the address or location, or within the geographic locality of the feature. A positional accuracy code of 3 or 4 is used only for ATMs (cash machines), Wi-Fi hotspots and public telephones, where the data is sourced from a single authoritative and non-duplicated source. Continuous efforts are made to improve the accuracy of the geocoding, as shown in the table below showing the range of positional accuracy codes.
| Positional accuracy code | % of total dataset – December 2010 | % of total dataset – September 2014 | % of total dataset – April 2019 |
|---|---|---|---|
If the positional accuracy is stated as ‘1’, the coordinates should fall within the footprint of the real- world feature in question, typically a building or structure.
Where the positional accuracy is stated as ‘2’, the coordinates will either be placed centrally in the text that relates to the feature – and may be within the extent of the feature – or will be positioned close to the true location of a part of the feature. In practice, it will probably be within 10 metres of either the feature or an edge of the feature’s geographic extent, although this cannot be guaranteed.
A positional accuracy of ‘3’ indicates that the coordinates are placed centrally on the correct road. As road lengths vary and the central position could be very near or a long way from the true location on the road, it is difficult to say exactly how far these instances might be shown from their true location. In the majority, it is to be expected that the assigned coordinate could be up to a kilometre away, with a small number being even farther.
A positional accuracy of ‘4’ means that the location assigned is in the correct geographic locality, such as the right village or industrial estate, and that it has not been possible to locate to a specific relevant road. Depending on how big the geographic locality in question is, the record’s true location could in reality be up to a few kilometres from the reported coordinates.
Each Points of Interest feature is matched to the closest road by performing an attribution and spatial match between the feature and OS MasterMap Highways Network. This results in each feature being given a Unique Street Reference Number (USRN). The match accuracy between the Points of Interest feature and the OS MasterMap Highways Network is determined from the USRN Match Indicator attribute. It is again very important that customers take this match indicator value of the feature into account when using it in applications.
If the match indicator is stated as ‘1’ the Points of Interest feature has been matched against the OS MasterMap Highways Network using the Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) from AddressBase and the USRN.
Where the match indicator is stated as ‘2’, the feature has been matched spatially to the road which appears in either the address detail or street name attributes. For more information on these individual attributes please see the Technical Specification.
A match indicator of ‘3’ indicates that the USRN has been spatially matched to the nearest road in the OS MasterMap Highways Network.
Please be aware that a match indicator of 3 may not necessarily be the access road to the feature.
The data contains both addressable and non-addressable records. Structured address information is only provided for those records that are addressable and can be successfully matched against AddressBase Plus.
AddressBase Plus contains current properties using addresses sourced from Local Authorities, Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail for England, Wales and Scotland. The Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) is the unique identifier for every addressable location in Great Britain.
Records that have been successfully matched will have a UPRN. Attempts have been made to provide address information where possible when not matched against AddressBase Plus.
Records have been attributed with both a TOID and TOID version that have been directly derived from area features within OS MasterMap Topography Layer based on the grid reference of the feature. There will be a number of features where a TOID value will not be provided because the feature does not sit within the correct OS MasterMap Topography Layer polygon, and these will have a TOID value of Not Assigned and a TOID version of ‘0’.
There are two main sources of data that provide approximately 80% of the Points of Interest features. The authoritative source for a type of feature is used to build the dataset where possible. Approximately
140 suppliers are used to create the dataset. The Points of Interest Provenance page lists all the suppliers and indicates their level of contribution to the dataset.
PointX relies upon approximately 140 data suppliers to provide the initial classification of each of the records. This is then used to allocate the appropriate class to the feature which can lead to examples where different classes are applied to the same real-world feature, dependent upon the base classification used by the different data suppliers. Part of the production process for the current product involves the removal of multiple instances of what is believed to be the same feature, it is possible that individual instances of what are, in fact, the same type of feature can be reported in different classes.
1
71.75
79.87
86.22
2
27.21
19.28
13.66
3
0.84
0.70
0.07
4
0.20
0.15
0.05
Total
100.00
100.00
100.00
Ordnance Survey
43.68%
118 Information
37.02%
Department for Transport
8.86%
Local Data Company
3.84%
Wilmington Healthcare Ltd
1.22%
Vocalink
1.13%
Edubase
0.64%
PayPoint
0.63%
Department for Transport (Parking)
0.51%
PointX
0.43%
Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions Avon & Somerset Constabulary Avon Fire Brigade Bedfordshire and Luton Fire and Rescue Service Bedfordshire Police British Wind Energy Association BT Openzone Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service Cambridgeshire Constabulary Cambridgeshire Fire & Rescue Service Cheshire Constabulary Cheshire Fire Service City of London Police Cleveland Fire Brigade Cleveland Police Cornwall County Fire Brigade Cumbria Constabulary Cumbria Fire Service Derbyshire Constabulary Derbyshire Fire & Rescue Devon & Cornwall Constabulary Dorset Fire and Rescue Service Dorset Police Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency Durham and Darlington Fire and Rescue Authority Durham Constabulary Dyfed-Powys Police East of England Ambulance Service East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service Essex County Fire and Rescue Service Essex Police Experian Gloucestershire Constabulary Gloucestershire Fire & Rescue Greater Manchester Fire Service Greater Manchester Police Gwent Police Hampshire Constabulary Hampshire Fire & Rescue Hereford & Worcester Fire Brigade Hertfordshire Constabulary Hertfordshire Fire & Rescue Historic Houses Association Humberside Fire Brigade
Humberside Police Information and Analytical Services Division - Education Department Isle of Wight Ambulance Service Isle of Wight Fire & Rescue Kent County Constabulary Kent Fire Brigade Lancashire Constabulary Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service Leicestershire Constabulary Leicestershire Fire & Rescue Lincolnshire Fire & Rescue Lincolnshire Police London Ambulance Service London Fire Brigade London Metropolitan Police Merseyside Fire Service Merseyside Police Mid & West Wales Fire & Rescue Service Moto National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux National Coastwatch Institution National Trust for Scotland NHS Choices Norfolk Constabulary Norfolk Fire Service North East Ambulance Service North Wales Fire and Rescue Service North Wales Police North West Ambulance Trust North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service North Yorkshire Police Northamptonshire Constabulary Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue Service Northumberland Fire and Rescue Service Northumbria Police Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service Nottinghamshire Police O2 limited Open Plaques Oxfordshire Fire Service Police Scotland RoadChef Motorways Ltd Royal Berkshire Fire & Rescue Service
Royal Mail Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Scottish Ambulance Service Scottish Court Service Scottish Fire and Rescue Service Shropshire Fire & Rescue South Central Ambulance Service South East Coast Ambulance Service South Wales Fire Service South Wales Police South Western Ambulance Service South Yorkshire Fire & Rescue South Yorkshire Police Headquarters Sport Scotland Sports Council for Wales Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service Staffordshire Police Headquarters Strategic Planning Department Suffolk Fire Service Suffolk Police Surrey Fire & Rescue Surrey Police Sussex Police Thames Valley Police The Cloud The Court Service Transport for London Trust Headquarters Tyne & Wear Fire Brigade Warwickshire Fire and Rescue Service Warwickshire Police Welcome Break Group Ltd Welsh Ambulance Service Welsh Assembly Government West Mercia Constabulary West Midlands Ambulance Service West Midlands Fire Service West Midlands Police West Sussex Fire & Rescue Service West Yorkshire Fire Service West Yorkshire Police Wiltshire Constabulary Wiltshire Fire Brigade Yorkshire Ambulance Service
The glossary provides a list of terms and their definitions applicable to the Points of Interest product.
| Glossary term | Definition |
|---|---|
Accuracy
The closeness of the results of observations, computations or estimates to the true values or the values accepted as being true. Accuracy relates to the exactness of the result and is the exactness of the operation by which the result is obtained.
Administrative area
A blanket term used by Ordnance Survey to refer to all public administrative areas, specifically local government management and electoral areas.
American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII)
A 7-bit code for encoding a standard character set.
Area
A spatial extent defined by circumscribing lines that form a closed perimeter that does not intersect itself.
Attribute
An attribute is a property of an entity, usually used to refer to a non-spatial qualification of a spatially referenced entity. For example, a name or descriptive code indicating what an entity represents or how it should be portrayed.
Attribute code
An alphanumeric identifier code used in digital map data to describe each feature in terms either of the object surveyed or its representation on the map (or both).
Coordinates
Pairs of numbers, such as an easting and a northing, expressing horizontal distances along original axes. Alternatively, triplets of numbers measuring horizontal and vertical distances.
Currency
An expression of the up-to-dateness of data.
Data format
A specification that defines the order in which data is stored or a description of the way data is held in a file or record.
Eastings
See rectangular coordinates.
Feature
An item of detail within a map that can be a point and/or symbol, text or line.
Field
A specified part of a record containing a unit of data, such as the date of digitising. The unit of data may be a data element or a data item. Every field has a name and a predefined interpretation.
Geographical information system (GIS)
A system for capturing, storing, checking, integrating, analysing and displaying data that is spatially referenced to the Earth. This is normally considered to involve a spatially referenced computer database and appropriate applications software.
Map scale
The ratio between the extent of a feature on the map and its extent on the ground, normally expressed as a representative fraction, such as 1:1,250 or 1:10 000.
Name
The proper name or label of an object (real world) or feature (object abstraction). The descriptive name might consist of one or more text strings or be an attribute of the object or object abstraction.
National Grid
A unique referencing system that can be applied to all Ordnance Survey maps of Great Britain (GB) at all scales. It is used by Ordnance Survey on all post-war mapping to provide an unambiguous spatial reference in Great Britain for any place or entity whatever the map scale. The National Grid is defined by the OSGB36 spheroid.
Northings
See rectangular coordinates.
Object (real world)
A recognisable discrete part of the real world.
Origin
The zero point in a system of rectangular coordinates.
Positional accuracy
The degree to which the coordinates define a point’s true position in the world, directly related to the spheroid and/or projection on which the coordinate system is based.
Precision
The exactness with which a value is expressed, whether the value be right or wrong.
Rectangular coordinates
Also known as X-Y coordinates and as eastings and northings. These are two-dimensional coordinates that measure the position of any point relative to an arbitrary origin on a plane surface (for example, a map projection).
Resolution
A measure of the ability to detect quantities. High resolution implies a high degree of discrimination but has no implication as to accuracy. For example, in a collection of data in which the coordinates are rounded to the nearest metre, resolution is 1 metre, but the accuracy may be ±5 metres or worse.
Spatial data
Data that includes a reference to a two- or three-dimensional position in space as one of its attributes. It is used as a synonym for geometric data.
Transfer medium
The physical medium on which digital data is transferred from one computer system to another. For example, Secure URL.
The classification scheme has three levels of information:
There are 9 Groups at the first level and each Group is numbered 01–07, 09, 10. Numbering is not sequential.
There are 52 Categories at the second level, numbered 01–60. Numbering is not sequential.
There are over 600 Classes at the third level.
Customers can select Points of Interest from the Group and Category level listed below: