The landscape for UK centric geographic information system (GIS) and other locational datasets is a particularly busy area, with a vast range of suppliers, data types and licence terms. Often, the most detailed data can come with complex terms of use, and a prohibitive cost. As part of the support to the MEDApps competition, Energy Systems Catapult created this guideline report on available GIS data sources and complementary datasets. 

Innovators, academia, industry, and the government regularly make use of GIS related data for all sorts of projects and analysis spanning from energy and meteorology to politics and marketing. Energy Systems Catapult uses it in a number of modelling tools and services, and help innovators understand what GIS data is available to them. 

This report details some of that knowledge and aims to give an insight into the landscape for GIS and other locational datasets, focussed on the UK. There is a massive amount of data publicly available, but much of it lacks discoverability and often it is necessary to spend a long time searching through data portals and other resources. 

Key points

The Energy Related GIS Data Landscape report begins with an overview of the most common GIS data formats, how they are used, and their pros and cons.

The report provides information on open and closed data available from Ordnance Survey (OS), as they are the seminal source for cartographic data in Great Britain and form the backbone of many GIS related modelling tools. Information on similar or equivalent datasets available from other sources, such as Open Street Map (OSM) is also provided. 

The rest of the report goes on to explore data that can be used alongside the locational data detailed previously, such as datasets released and maintained by the government, census results, marketing demographics, and private/commercial data. This is by no means a complete picture and does not aim to be an exhaustive list of data sources, however the information presented is comprehensive enough to give a solid grounding on where to start looking, and what to look for.  

All data providers or users who are interested in contributing or being added to this report are invited to get in touch.