Pictometry proves a nationwide success

28 August 2007, 3:51pm

With an ever increasing number of towns and cities being captured, Pictometry oblique view imagery has been sparking interest from local authorities and emergency services across the entire country.

Gloucestershire Constabulary, the London boroughs of Kingston upon Thames and Sutton, and the city councils of Portsmouth and Wolverhampton are just a handful of the customers that are now taking advantage of this unique reference tool.

Pictometry oblique imagery provides an instantly available, ‘off-the-shelf’ dataset of high‑resolution 15‑cm imagery and is exclusively distributed in Great Britain by Ordnance Survey.

Every feature on the landscape can be viewed and interrogated from up to twenty different angles. This allows for the visualisation of information like the number of floors a building has, points of ingress and egress and the easy identification of surrounding objects not always obvious from traditional aerial photography.

Brian Colthorpe is IT Services Officer at Slough Borough Council, which has recently taken up oblique view imagery. Brian says, “Although we’ve only had the software for a short time, Pictometry oblique view imagery is already being used by our Planning and Enforcement teams for gaining perspective views before site visits or negotiations. In addition, a number of other teams throughout the council have also expressed an interest in the software.”

BLOM Aerofilms, which undertakes the flying and image capture for Pictometry oblique view imagery, is actively working all over the country. Currently, work is progressing in Scotland, with Glasgow and 65% of Edinburgh already complete.

Access to multiple perspectives is particularly useful for law enforcement, emergency response, planning departments, insurance companies and others in need of a detailed view of the elevation and surroundings of a building or location.

Eddie Bulpitt, Product Manager for oblique view imagery at Ordnance Survey, believes work towards further coverage is progressing well. “We’re very confident of being able to offer our customers data for every town and city in Great Britain with populations of more than 50 000 by the end of the year.

“The wealth of functionality that Pictometry oblique view imagery offers is huge and it’s extremely encouraging to see more and more businesses and organisations taking it up”.

Pictometry oblique imagery fits well with Ordnance Survey’s core datasets. It complements the entire OS MasterMap family of Topography, Imagery, Address and Integrated Transport Network Layers and can also be used in conjunction with Ordnance Survey’s Points of Interest data.

www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk

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