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THE DIGITAL NATIONAL FRAMEWORK 
- BRIDGING INFORMATION THROUGH GEOGRAPHY 
K.J.Murray*, G. Hart” & P Allan“ 
** Ordnance Survey, Romsey Road, Southampton, SO16 4GU 
(Keith.Murray, Glen.Hart, Peat. Allan)@ordnancesurvey.co.uk 
Commission IV, WG IV/4 
KEY WORDS: Interoperability, GIS, Integration, Federated, database, Spatial Infrastructure, Acquisition 
ABSTRACT: 
We are currently witnessing massive growth in the use of geographic information around the world. Governments are seizing on the 
power of geography, location based services are now finally starting to develop and the citizen has more access to geographic 
information today than ever before. This paper describes how, to support this greater adoption, geography is gradually being 
transformed in Great Britain to better support and service all users and “join up” the many disparate forms of information. The 
concept underlying this "joined up" approach in Great Britain is an initiative called the Digital National Framework (DNF). 
Elements of the DNF are being developed in conjunction with other mapping agencies and evolved in conjunction with a wide 
number of users in the government, utility and private sectors. The paper will also demonstrate how a whole range of technologies 
such as remote sensing, photogrammetry, laser scanning, real time kinematic GPS, land survey and data in a party databases are 
being combined to take geographic information to new levels of integration which offers potential for a powerful national capability. 
At the heart of the DNF model features such as buildings, land parcels, roads etc, are each referenced by a unique identifier (known 
as a TOID) to enable data linking & data sharing — the TOID represents an entity at a physical location. The structure of DNF will 
be described in more detail in the paper but the scope also incorporates the national coordinate system and the relationships with 
GPS, reference and application data models, metadata, feature catalogues, referencing relationships, data quality, compliance and 
terminology. Fundamental principles include reuse of information (capture once and use many times), the ability to apply common 
methods of publishing derived information, enabling flexible visualisation and support for web services of many kinds. The DNF is 
being implemented in Great Britain and is being underpinned by Ordnance Survey's new layered database known as OS MasterMap. 
OS MasterMap is an integrated database, which will incorporate detailed topographic data, imagery, addresses, transport networks 
and in time a new height model, land related information, and more. The DNF concept is an evolutionary inclusive framework, to 
develop a coherent and consistent approach to georeferencing and integration of disparate datasets that are underpinned and 
bridged by geography. 
  
1. INTRODUCTION example a simple aerial photograph can be developed into a 
map-like orthoimage from which — measurements and 
1.1 The Information Age interpretation applied to yield information about something of 
interest. Thereon an analysis and comparison of two or more 
Where ever we are in the world, most of us now live in d orthoimages from different periods, or several epochs and 
society driven increasingly by information. Information is integrated with other evidence may then yield KNOWLEDGE 
collected to determine the population and the characteristics of > for example the nature of the retreat of glaciers in a 
that population. In turn this information is used to determine the mountainous area over several decades. Further information 
(nomi and social fabric of a national economy. For example from other studies combined with this knowledge may conclude 
id ve have sufficient housing?”, "docs housing meet the a general trend about natural cycles in the Earth’s climate 
emerging social characteristics — e.g. single parent families”, “is change. Other information may prove that this is also being 
the housing located where it is needed”, “is the services affected by pollution by Man and his vehicles, industry and 
infrastructure sufficient to support growth i.e. water, sewerage, lifestyle. T T 
power etc?" and so on. In many other fields too, information is 
sought, collected, processed and used. The explosion in the use WISDOM gained from such a level of understanding and the 
of the Internet alone has generated a whole new economy integration of many disparate forms of informatioi such as this 
around information. Never before has technology made it so might then lead to the direct actions required to mitigate the 
easy to collect information of all kinds, store it and use it in risks to Man and the future of mankind. Such data and 
many different ways. information in several other disciplines e.g. research into deadly 
diseases, requires the integration of several disparate kinds of 
12 From Data to Wisdom data. information sharing. information processing and the 
: : sharing of knowledge from many sources. 
It is a well established thesis that raw DATA is valuable but has = 5 ; 
limitations. With processing and some additional data we can 
| nd > : á It would be regrettable then, in our rapidly advancing 
often turn this raw material into INFORMATION. For 
technological society, if in the way we acquire use, and process 
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