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By viv, 21 May, 2013 8:00 am

Wales Coast Path GeoVation Challenge winners, Helen and Nicola Steer, have just launched their new iPhone app, Real Food Wales, which will help visitors to the area discover  local, sustainable and delicious food.

Last year’s GeoVation Challenge  called for innovative ideas using geography and technology which would help connect communities and visitors along the Wales Coast Path, benefiting those who live and work along the route, and beyond and Real Food Wales was one of the 5 ideas we funded.  They were awarded a £30,000 of innovation funding to develop their idea.  They are part of Mapkin: a team of five people who have worked together to develop this app.

Real Food Wales is an easy to use app, which maps over 150 of the best food businesses in Pembrokeshire, helping users access sustainable and delicious food.

Helen from Real Food Wales, said: “Real Food Wales is an ideal app for anyone looking for a special meal at a restaurant, a bite to eat in a quirky café, the best sausage in town for your campfire or a food experience you’ll never forget. The app utilises our unique network of local knowledge by displaying a large selection of food businesses on an offline interactive map of Pembrokeshire. The map really highlights what an exceptional range of local food businesses are operating in this area.”

The core feature of Real Food Wales is the interactive map, consisting of five zoom levels, which allow users to find the best places to eat out, buy food or have a foodie experience. A unique feature of the app is that it stores an offline map of Pembrokeshire onto the device, meaning that users can still access all of the information even when there is no mobile signal.

Continue reading 'GeoVation winner launches Real Food Wales app'»

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By chris, 3 May, 2013 10:55 am

So, with judging now underway in our current challenge, Chris describes yesterday’s All Wales Coast Path first anniversary event in West Wales and progress of our previous challenge winner.

GeoVation challenge partner, Ramblers Cymru hosted a fantastic event in Kidwelly, yesterday to celebrate the first anniversary of the opening of the Wales Coast Path and to launch the Big Welsh Walk, which takes place around the path this bank holiday weekend. The Wales Coast Path was, of course, the subject of our previous GeoVation challenge: “How can we connect communities and visitors along the Wales Coast Path?” which was timed to coincide with the official opening of the path on 5 May 2012.

Throughout the day, class after class of local school children (and adults) explored Wales and its coastline with Gwenda Owen, Ramblers Community Engagement Officer, on the enormous map produced by Ordnance Survey for Ramblers Cymru, and visited stands exhibiting activities on or near the path including local beekeeping, and allotment growing groups. In the afternoon MissionExplore (previous GeoVation winners) worked with several classes to produce mini mission explore booklets with children choosing their missions.

Local school children exploring Wales with Gwenda Owen, Ramblers Community Engagement Officer

Continue reading 'Real Food Wales at Wales Coast Path Anniversary'»

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By viv, 9 April, 2013 8:00 am

We are currently running the ‘ How can we help British Business improve environmental performance?’ GeoVation Challenge calling for your innovative ideas to help create a better place.   The best ideas can win a slice of £100,000 in innovation funding to get their ideas off the ground.

If you’re thinking of entering you may like to know more about the GeoVation Challenge process.  What is the basis of the challenge and what happened before we launched it?  What happens after you submit your ideas and how are the best ideas chosen?

In our video below, we explain the GeoVation process and the steps to becoming a winner of innovation funding from GeoVation.

Find out about what happens at a Powwow and how we launch the GeoVation Challenge.

Hear from our shortlisted ideas about collaboration and what they gain from attending a GeoVation Camp.

Find out about the ‘Innovation = Problem x Solution x Execution’ formula.

Continue reading 'Find out how you could win innovation funding'»

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By viv, 23 January, 2013 8:00 am

The winners of last year’s  ‘How can we connect visitors and communities along the Wales Coast Path?‘ GeoVation Challenge  have been working hard to progress their innovative ideas.  In the guest post below, Steve Knight of ap Ogam explains what they’ve been doing to develop their billingual smartphone app for augmented reality storytellling along the Wales Coast Path:

Since winning our Geovation award – we have been extremely busy! But we thought it time to give a bit of an overview of what we’re aiming to achieve and our progress so far…

We have a 9 month program (which started in October) for delivering the pilot phase of the project.

We have created a not-for-profit company to run the project. For two main reasons:

1. We feel this better represents it’s community aspirations
2. By separating responsibility for the company from profit, we give it more opportunities for future development in whatever direction and in whosoever’s hands are the most appropriate

Apart from extensive business planning and incorporating the company The first three months have seen us design, wireframe and develop an operational prototype app. It’s not very pretty yet, but we have now designed branding which will be brought into the app during the next phase of development.

Continue reading 'Augmented reality along the Wales Coast Path'»

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By viv, 28 November, 2012 8:00 am

As usual, it’s been pretty hectic in Ordnance Survey’s Innovation team over recent weeks so we thought we’d give you an update what we’ve been up to.

Luke and Ian have been busy touring around Britain (trying to avoid the almost constant rain of late)  on a series of OS OpenData masterclasses.  Last week they were in Scotland to kick off the series, before heading south to London. This week they are visiting Cardiff and Nottingham.

Luke says:  “We announced our fourth series of masterclasses at the beginning of November and within a matter of days each date was fully booked up, so they’ve been immensely popular. Each class catered for 40 people so approximately 200 have attended in total over the past couple of weeks. The classes provide attendees with an opportunity to gain a greater understanding of open data and the tools and techniques needed to use such information. However this series has been a little different to the last three, as this time participants had an opportunity to use OS OpenSpace, Ordnance Survey’s free web mapping service that allows users to display up-to-date Ordnance Survey mapping in a web page or online environment.”

Continue reading 'This week in Ordnance Survey Innovation Team'»

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By viv, 14 November, 2012 8:00 am

In this post you can find out how many GeoVation Challenges we’ve run, how much innovation funding has been awarded, and where our GeoVation winners are on the map!

The GeoVation initiative was started by Ordnance Survey at the end of 2009 to encourage open innovation in addressing communities’ needs where geography is a key enabler.  Since then we’ve given innovation funding to 20 new ventures so they can develop their ideas.

To date we’ve run 5 GeoVation Challenges. We believe that for innovation to succeed it needs to have its foundations in a real problem worth solving and so, after our first ‘general’ GeoVation Challenge , we’ve themed our GeoVation Challenges. We’ve posed questions intended to generate social and environmental value from the ideas submitted, such as ‘How can Britain feed itself?’, ‘How can we transform our neighbourhoods?’ and ‘How can we improve transport in Britain?’ We’ve also run more location specific challenges, such as asking how we can connect communities and visitors along the new Wales Coast Path.

Over the course of these Challenges 1448 people have registered, 509 ideas have been submitted and 57 teams have attended 4 GeoVation Camps. Participants invited to the weekend GeoVation Camp benefit from being taken through a process that prepares them to be “Match fit to Pitch”  – able to describe their idea and the problem they are solving in a 2 minute ‘pecha kucha ‘style presentation

Continue reading 'Putting our innovation winners on the map'»

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By viv, 19 September, 2012 8:00 am

GeoVation is Ordnance Survey’s innovation initiative that helps communities address specific problems where geography forms part of the solution.

In our video below, we explain the GeoVation process and the steps to becoming a winner of innovation funding from GeoVation.

Find out about what happens at a Powwow and how we launch the GeoVation Challenge.

Hear from our shortlisted ideas about collaboration and what they gain from attending a GeoVation Camp.

Find out about the ‘Innovation = Problem x Solution x Execution’ formula.

See the winners awarded funding at a GeoVation Showcase and listen to what they thought of being part of GeoVation.

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By viv, 19 July, 2012 1:06 pm

Well done to everyone who took part in the Wales Coast Path GeoVation Showcase in Cardiff yesterday. The GeoVation Challenge called for ideas to help connect communities and visitors along the newly opened Wales Coast Path.

The finalists pitched their excellent ideas ‘Dragon’s Den’ style to the the judging panel and audience at Cardiff’s SWALEC Stadium.  The judges then had the unenviable tasking of selecting the winners to receive a share of  £125,000 in innovation funding to take their ideas forward.

The audience voted for their favourite idea to win the Community Award of £1,000.

The Five winners awarded funding are:

Perfect Visitor Companion  from Jamie Hanna and Julie McNiece of MyTourTalk. This multimedia video experience will guide visitors to the Wales Coast path through a smartphone app that would be 100% accessible as the geolocated data would be stored offline. This group was awarded £40,000.

Continue reading 'Five teams win innovation funding in our Wales Coast Path Challenge'»

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By viv, 10 May, 2012 8:00 am

THE world might be getting smaller, but according to a recent news story one in 10 children cannot find the UK on a map

Thanks to our GeoVation winner, MaxiMap pupils are being given the chance to brush up on their geographical skills with their enormous floor-sized maps which can be used as a teaching tool to expand pupils’ knowledge of the world.

Ann Jones of MaxiMap said “I was head of history at Cefn Hengoed and there was a lack of knowledge among the pupils, they didn’t know where the countries were. I spoke to teachers in other disciplines, in things like geography and English and they found the same. People would say to pupils ‘somewhere to the north of Scotland’ and they wouldn’t know where it was.”
So Ann commissioned a giant floor map of the British Isles and took it into the classroom to highlight cities where civil disturbances took place in the 19th century for her Year 10 GCSE pupils. Ann then joined forces with Llanelli printing company Heritage Screen Print and set up MaxiMap, a partnership which has seen the business go from strength to strength. In 2010, MaxiMap won the GeoVation Challenge .

Current new teaching aids include a periodic table and a political map of the world too. Around 200 of the giant floor maps have been sold to schools and companies, including 50 to CAA Publishing in Aberystwyth, who purchased them with a grant from the Welsh Government and provided them to schools across Wales. The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust recently ordered nine of the maps to be used in their educational programmes, and Ramblers Wales have purchased a map for events relating to the opening of the Wales Coastal Path.

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By viv, 30 March, 2012 8:00 am

Two of our GeoVation Challenge winners from last year, City Farmers and Mission:Explore have been working together to create some beautiful maps using Open Data for Urban Earth, a project to (re)present some of the largest urban areas on our planet by exploring, experiencing and expressing them.  In the guest post below Peter, from City Farmers, tells us more.

In late February, Dan (Raven-Ellison, Mission Explore) took up my offer to produce some maps for his series of urban story walks, an exploration of London using open government datasets to plan his routes. The aim of these walks was to see how the physical environment related to the highs and lows of government statistics.

The first walk was to explore areas with high levels of violent crime. From the online London mapper, Dan had observed that, apart from the West End, Kingston had the highest rate of reported violence. The journey was to start in Kingston and to travel across south West London to the west end.

Although by far the highest rate of violent crime occurs in the West End, this is due to its low residential population, where as Kingston has a relatively average population level yet comes third across London.

Dan’s next journey was to explore the least connected areas of London. Given that he would be taking people to some remote areas of London, it was also nice to see how those areas rated. The final map is a combination of TfL’s Public Transport Accessibility Data (PTAL) and the Environment Deprivation Rank (ED) of the Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD).

To highlight the PTAL levels in highest and lowest ranked areas of Environmental Deprivation, I chose to change the point style in those areas. To achieve that a blur was used on those in middle ED areas.

Following on from the comments on the second map, I really started thinking about how I could colour the maps to represent the data I was showing. Luckily enough the next map in the series was to be depression. Looking at the data available, the best grain I could find was for measured depression based on +2 results from the NHS clinical interview schedule. This showed the rate of what was clinically determined depression at ward level. Given the obvious connotation of blue as depressed and yellow as happy it was mealy an examination of tones to find something I liked.

Next up was an exploration of unemployment, given no natural colour choices for this I had a bit more experimentation to do. On the other hand, as these were based on actual numbers rather than a comparative indicator there was a lot more scope for detailing the extremes.

For areas of low unemployment, I went for a very soft looking field effect. As things get worse the colours darken and I think I have what looks like a smog effect. As the plan for the walk was to look at some of the highest areas of Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) claimant rates I felt it best to look at the top 10% in more detail. For this I attempted to make the areas look a lot harder. I highlighted the top five areas by using a cracked effect and individual colours.

There are also a few areas highlighted where there is a high gradient between wards or small areas of low relative Employment Deprivation (from the IMDs again) within wards with a high rates of JSA claimant.

The final walk of the series was a look at life expectancy. This initial problem this presented was that it varies between men and women. In order to express this I have chosen to express the average life expectancy in an area, and then provide a variance between men and women; in the low numbers of areas where man outlive women, I changed the text to yellow.

Unlike the other maps I had not used quantiles as I decided to colour the areas at year intervals of life expectancy. In order to explain this I chose to key the map using a graph which shows the percentage of the population which live over a certain number of years.

If you would like to know more about the maps or see them in more detail, we plan to add them to the City Farmers website once we have a hi-res image widget set up on our server.

If you’d like copies of the maps then feel free to contact us through the site, I’m happy to send a link to download them whilst they are unavailable.  If you’d like to commission some maps of your own then I’m happy to discus this. The analysis for these was relatively straight forward but would take on more complex sets of information analysis, whilst still aiming working towards something that looks good and draws the eye.

Thanks for reading, I hope you like what you see.

Peter Boyce

You can find out more about Urban Earth and see a more detailed version of this post  here