Named Features

The OS NGD Named Features Collection gives you access to the most current and comprehensive list of names of features and places of geographic significance captured and collated by Ordnance Survey. The geographical names assigned to named features in this collection are defined as location identifiers for named locations in the real world, such as cities, towns, beaches and reservoirs. The collection enables you to perform quick and accurate gazetteer searches as well as high-level visualisation and spatial analysis of named features and places.

The Named Road Junction Feature Type provides a list of named intersections between roads at a junction or roundabout; the intersection may be numbered, have an official name, or be assigned a modelled name based on the names of the intersecting roads.

The Crowd Sourced Name Point Feature Type provides names collated from data submitted to the Vernacular Names Tool in the OS Data Hub. Crowd sourced names may be vernacular names for existing OS features or other features which are useful to Emergency Services but which fall outside current OS capture specifications (for example, snow gates).

Example image showing what the four feature types in the OS NGD Named Features Collection look like in the data. A background map has been included to provide context.

Collection applications

The OS NGD Named Features Collection allows you to:

• Ensure your features and place name data is always up to date with up to daily updates.

• Quickly find named locations, such as regions, settlements, areas of water, or beaches.

• Look up any places or roads with an alternative language name as the collection contains place name data in English, Welsh and Scots / Gaelic.

• Calculate the number of addresses in a given settlement when used alongside the OS NGD Address Theme.
• Visualise areas of interest.

• Understand the extent of named settlements (including city centres, towns, villages, hamlets, etc.) using the polygon data available within the Named Area Feature Type.

• Get accurate location information on intersecting roads when using the Named Road Junction Feature Type for tasks such as recording, reporting and incident logging.

• Identify multiple names in use for the same place.

• Quickly and more accurately confirm incident locations (Emergency Services' call handlers) if colloquial place names are used by callers.

Examples of features within the Crowd Sourced Name Point Feature Type. The background map is centred over Torquay, Devon, England.

Example of multiple Crowd Sourced Name Point feature names being attributed to the same Compound Structure feature. A background map has been included to provide context.

Please note that the depiction of settlement boundaries in the Named Area Feature Type is an OS geographic depiction of the extent of settlements and should not be mistaken for official administrative or electoral boundaries; we recommend using the OS NGD Boundaries Collection if you require a definitive dataset of administrative and electoral boundaries for your area of interest.

Key elements

• Up to daily updates to data.

• Plug and play – the data is simple and quick to implement as you don't need to pre-process it before you use it.

• Rich attribution ensures the data is straightforward to navigate and query.

• Persistent unique identifiers with lifecycle information.

• In addition to being represented as a point, every named feature will now also be represented as a polygon in the Named Area Feature Type. Geometry will be available for these polygons, giving you a granular level of detail and a more accurate representation of the spatial extent of named features, such as settlements.

• The Extent Definition attribute gives you access to automatically derived indicative polygon extents for named landform features, such as hills, mountains and areas of woodland. You can use this attribute to analyse how the data has been generated and make informed decisions when implementing the data into your solutions.

• Enhanced locality / settlement and place names due to improved classifications and definitions.

• Where available, useful links are provided to third-party databases (for example, DBpedia and GeoNames.org) to let you easily gain more information about a named settlement.

• The Named Road Junction Feature Type includes the names and / or numbers of roads intersecting a named or numbered road junction.

Coverage

Great Britain.

Default coordinate reference system

British National Grid (EPSG: 27700).

Temporal filtering

The earliest date on which you can request a one-off snapshot of a date in the past for data in this collection is noted at the top of the individual feature type pages.

Supply formats

GeoPackage, CSV (comma-separated values), GeoJSON or vector tiles (the latter format is only available for one feature type in the collection: Named Point).

Supply mechanism

Accessed through the OS Data Hub via:

• OS Select+Build

• OS NGD API – Features

• OS NGD API – Tiles (only available for one feature type in the collection: Named Point)

Using our data

• Included in the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA) – therefore, it's free at point of use for Public Sector organisations.

• Available to OS Partners for commercial resell in your solutions.