Manish Jethwa, CTO, Ordnance Survey, the national mapping agency for Great Britain, shares insights into how the organisation’s data centre strategy supports its partnerships with government, businesses and tech giants.
How does Ordnance Survey leverage data centres to manage the National Geographic Database (NGD) of Great Britain?
We are fortunate to have our own data centre at Explorer House, which is complemented by using other providers like Microsoft’s Azure. This combination offers flexibility in data storage, ensuring resiliency, high availability and data bandwidth for processing and updating the OS National Geographic Database (OS NGD).
By leveraging both on-premises and cloud-based data centres, we can efficiently manage the vast amounts of geospatial data we collect. This hybrid approach allows us to scale our operations as needed, providing the necessary infrastructure to support our data processing and storage requirements.
Additionally, it ensures that our data is always accessible and secure, enabling us to maintain the high standards of accuracy and reliability that our customers expect.
What role do technologies like Computer Vision and Machine Learning play in the storage, processing and updating of your geospatial data?
We use Computer Vision (CV) and Machine Learning (ML) primarily for data processing, extracting and analysing features in collected imagery. These advanced technologies enable us to automate the identification and classification of various geographic features, such as buildings, roads and natural landscapes.
By integrating CV and ML into our workflows, we can update the OS NGD more frequently and share changes quickly with stakeholders, ensuring our data remains current. This automation not only improves the efficiency of our data processing, but it also enhances the accuracy and consistency of the information we provide. As a result, our customers benefit from up-to-date and reliable geospatial data that supports a wide range of applications.
Given the scale of your operations, what are the key challenges you face in terms of data storage, scalability and security within your data centre infrastructure?
Our main challenges include securely sharing vast data quantities internally and externally, managing data governance processes and ensuring adequate backups across our supported infrastructure.
With the increasing volume of geospatial data we handle, scalability is a critical concern. We need to ensure that our data centre infrastructure can accommodate growing data storage requirements while maintaining high performance and availability.
Security is another major challenge, as we must protect sensitive data from unauthorised access and cyberthreats. Implementing robust data governance processes helps us manage data quality, compliance and lifecycle management effectively. Additionally, ensuring our data is backed up and recoverable in case of any disruptions is essential for maintaining Business Continuity.
How does Ordnance Survey ensure the reliability and accuracy of the 20,000 changes made daily to your geographic database?
All changes are validated through a multi-checkpoint process as data moves through various stages. This rigorous validation process involves multiple layers of quality control, including automated checks and manual reviews by our expert team.
We constantly evaluate and adapt this process to maintain the reliability and accuracy our customers expect. By incorporating feedback from users and leveraging advanced technologies like ML, we can continuously improve our validation methods.
This ensures the data we provide is not only accurate but also up-to-date, reflecting the latest changes in the geographic landscape. Our commitment to quality and precision is at the core of our operations, enabling us to deliver reliable geospatial data to our customers.
Can you share insights into how Ordnance Survey’s data centre strategy supports your partnerships with government, businesses and tech giants?
Our data centre strategy adapts to the changing environment. While we can’t provide access to our on-premises data centre for security reasons, we explore third-party data centres and services to expand customer options for accessing our data products.
By partnering with leading technology providers, we can leverage their expertise and infrastructure to enhance our data storage and processing capabilities. This collaborative approach allows us to offer more flexible and scalable solutions to our customers, including government agencies, businesses and tech giants.
By integrating our data with their platforms and services, we can support a wide range of applications, from urban planning and environmental monitoring to navigation and location-based services.
What steps has Ordnance Survey taken to optimise energy efficiency and sustainability in its data centre operations?
We monitor and reduce our environmental impact through renewable energy sources and use extracted heat from cooling to heat the building. For third-party data centres, we track energy consumption to balance environmental and financial costs in our infrastructure decisions.
Our commitment to sustainability extends to all aspects of our operations, including data centre management. By implementing energy-efficient technologies and practices, we aim to minimise our carbon footprint and contribute to a more sustainable future.
Additionally, we collaborate with our data centre partners to ensure their facilities adhere to high environmental standards. This holistic approach to sustainability helps us meet the growing demand for geospatial data while reducing our impact on the environment.
How do you see the evolution of data centres impacting Ordnance Survey’s ability to support emerging trends in geospatial data?
The adoption of AI has increased energy demands for training foundational models in analytics and automation. This trend is likely to continue, but we hope to mitigate it through more generalised models supporting various applications.
As data centres evolve, they will play a crucial role in enabling real-time analytics, autonomous systems and other emerging trends in geospatial data. By leveraging advanced data centre technologies, we can enhance our ability to process and analyse large volumes of data quickly and efficiently.
This will enable us to provide more timely and accurate insights to our customers, supporting a wide range of applications, from Smart Cities and transportation to environmental monitoring and disaster response.
