BGS launches OpenGeoscience

08 December 2009, 9:23pm

On 7 December, British Geological Survey (BGS) launched its new web site – OpenGeoscience – a free service where users can view maps and download photographs and other information. OpenGeoscience material is free-of-charge for non-commercial private study, research and educational activities. Users can explore the six OpenGeoscience sections - Data, Education, Maps, Pictures, Reports and Software on an easy-to-use web interface.

The site provides the world’s first open-access supply of street-level geological mapping for a whole country - better than 50m resolution - with on-the-fly viewing of bedrock and superficial geology overlaid on street maps and aerial photography. The web map service (WMS) provides access to 1:50,000 scale geological mapping for mash-up use (allowing access via OneGeology) and has open access to 50,000 photos, databases, educational resources, reports and software.

Encouraging innovation, research, teaching and non-commercial use of BGS materials, OpenGeoscience complements established commercial supply routes for BGS resources and provides the platform for further open access releases of BGS materials, e.g. scanned records information.

To show just how popular OpenGeoscience is with the ordinary citizen, on the day of its release, it was the most popular (shared) story on BBC News Online, with over 70,000 visitors to the BGS web site from the time it appeared at 10.30 a.m. - the number of visitors BGS normally gets in an average month. There were more than 10 million image hits (1000 a second!) and 300,000 page views.

Who said geology was not popular?

www.bgs.ac.uk/opengeoscience/

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