Water Network

The OS NGD Water Network Collection provides a three-dimensional structured link and node network of watercourses for Great Britain. Rivers, streams, lakes, lochs, drains and canals are represented as a series of network lines. There are three feature types in the collection: Water Link, Water Node, and Water Link Set.

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

Collection applications

The OS NGD Water Network Collection allows you to:

• Keep your water network data up to date and accurate with quarterly updates.

• Have a comprehensive and highly detailed digital representation of the watercourse network in Great Britain.

• Significantly enhance the systems used to manage waterways and rivers.

• Use the rich attribution to assign the likelihood of water movement and monitor any upstream pollution.

• Predict and model flooding and establish appropriate flood protection and response measures.

• Perform analytics and visual interpretation, particularly when used in combination with data from other OS NGD collections, for example, the OS NGD Building Features Collection.

• Manage statutory directives relating to watercourses.

• Conduct ecology studies, for example, species migration.

• Filter, select and refine data using the Description attribute that's assigned to all features.

Key elements

• Quarterly 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.

• The Water Link Set Feature Type provides a single geometry for a complete named watercourse.

• Cross reference table provided so you can easily link data between Water Link Set and Water Link features.

• The names of watercourses (where present) are given at primary, secondary and tertiary levels, including language alternatives.

Coverage

Great Britain.

Default coordinate reference systems

British National Grid + ODN Height (EPSG: 7405) for the Water Link and Water Node Feature Types; British National Grid (EPSG: 27700) for the Water Link Set Feature Type.

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.

Supply mechanism

Accessed through the OS Data Hub via:

• OS Select+Build

• OS NGD API – Features

• OS NGD API – Tiles

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.