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.

Useful links

An introductory guide to OS NGD Water Network is available on our More than Maps site. This guide details the layers, formats, and attribution available for OS NGD Water Network data.