Jump to content

Ordnance Survey National Grid

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Celuici (talk | contribs) at 11:42, 4 April 2010 (Add modern OS map). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For the electricity network, see National Grid (UK).

The British national grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references commonly used in Great Britain, different from using latitude and longitude.

The Ordnance Survey (OS) devised the national grid reference system, and it is heavily used in their survey data, and in maps (whether published by the Ordnance Survey or commercial map producers) based on those surveys. Grid references are also commonly quoted in other publications and data sources, such as guide books or government planning documents.

Two such systems exist for the British Isles: this article describes the one used for Great Britain and its outlying islands (including the Isle of Man); a similar system, used throughout Ireland (including Northern Ireland), is the Irish grid reference system (used jointly by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland and the former Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland).

General

File:National Grid square TF at 1 in 250 000 scale.jpg
Grid square TF, shown at a scale of 1:250 000. The map shows The Wash and the North Sea, as well as places within the counties of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk.

The grid is based on the OSGB36 datum (Ordnance Survey Great Britain 1936, based on the Airy 1830 ellipsoid), and was introduced after the retriangulation of 1936–1962.

The Airy ellipsoid is a regional best fit for Britain; more modern mapping tends to use the GRS80 ellipsoid used by the GPS (the Airy ellipsoid assumes the Earth to be about 1 km smaller in diameter than the GRS80 ellipsoid, and to be slightly less flattened). The maps adopt a Transverse Mercator projection with an origin at 49° N, 2° W (an offshore point in the English Channel which lies between the island of Jersey and the French port of St. Malo).[1] Over the Airy ellipsoid a straight line grid, the National Grid, is placed with a new false origin (to eliminate negative numbers), creating a 700 km by 1300 km grid. This false origin is located south-west of the Isles of Scilly. The distortion created between the OS grid and the projection is countered by a scale factor in the longitude to create two lines of longitude with zero distortion rather than one. Grid north and true north are only aligned on the 400 km easting of the grid which is 2° W (OSGB36) and approx. 2° 0' 5" W (WGS 84).

OSGB 36 was also used by Admiralty nautical charts until 2000[citation needed] after which WGS 84 has been used.

A geodetic transformation between OSGB 36 and other terrestrial reference systems (like ITRF2000, ETRS89, or WGS 84) can become quite tedious if attempted manually. The most common transformation is called the Helmert datum transformation, which results in a typical 7 m error from true. The definitive transformation from ETRS89 that is published by the OSGB is called the National Grid Transformation OSTN02.[2] This models the detailed distortions in the 1936–1962 retriangulation, and achieves backwards compatibility in grid coordinates to sub-metre accuracy.

Datum shift between OSGB 36 and WGS 84

The difference between the coordinates on different datums varies from place to place. The longitude and latitude positions on OSGB 36 are the same as for WGS 84 at a point in the Atlantic Ocean well to the west of Great Britain. In Cornwall the WGS 84 longitude lines are about 70 metres east of their OSGB 36 equivalents, this value rising gradually to about 120 m east on the east coast of East Anglia. The WGS 84 latitude lines are about 70 m south of the OSGB 36 lines in South Cornwall, the difference diminishing to zero in the Scottish Borders, and then increasing to about 50 m north on the north coast of Scotland. (NB. If the lines are further east, then the longitude value of any given point is further west. Similarly, if the lines are further south, the values will give the point a more northerly latitude.) The smallest datum shift is on the west coast of Scotland and the greatest in Kent.

Datum shift between OSGB 36 and ED 50

These two datums are not really both in general use in any one place, but for a point in the English Channel halfway between Dover and Calais, the ED50 longitude lines are about 20 m east of the OSGB36 equivalents, and the ED50 latitude lines are about 150 m south of the OSGB36 ones.

Grid letters

For the first letter, the grid is divided into squares of size 500 km by 500 km, outlined in dark grey on the map to the right. There are four of these which contain significant land area within Great Britain: S, T, N and H. The O square contains a tiny area of North Yorkshire, almost all of which lies below mean high tide.[3]

For the second letter, each 500 km square is subdivided into 25 squares of size 100 km by 100 km, each with a letter code from A to Z (omitting I) starting with A in the north-west corner to Z in the south-east corner. These squares are outlined in light grey on the map, with those containing land lettered. The central (2° W) meridian is shown in red.

It would be possible to extend the grid system over Ireland, completing the S and N squares and introducing what would become the R and M squares (with the arrangement of first letters following the same pattern as for the second letter). However, there is no motion for this at the moment, and the accuracy of the projection would start to diminish in the west of Ireland, more than 8 degrees from the central meridian. Theoretically, the system extends far over the Atlantic Ocean and well into Western Europe with square AA near Iceland and square ZZ in northern Italy. In fact, Rockall is mapped by the Ordnance Survey, but is usually shown as an inset without gridlines on a mainland sheet. However, the grid can be extended to put Rockall in grid square MC as shown in this 1:50,000 mockup.

Grid digits

Within each square, eastings and northings from the origin (south west corner) of the square are given numerically. For example, NH0325 means a 1 km square whose south-west corner is 3 km east and 25 km north from the south-west corner of square NH. A location can be indicated to varying resolutions numerically, usually from two digits in each coordinate (for a 1 km square) through to five (for a 1 m square); in each case the first half of the digits is for the first coordinate and the second half for the other. The most common usage is the six figure grid reference, employing three digits in each coordinate to determine a 100 m square. For example, the grid reference of the 100 m square containing the summit of Ben Nevis is NN 166 712. (Grid references may be written with or without spaces, e.g. also NN166712.)

All numeric grid references

Grid references may also be quoted as a pair of numbers: eastings then northings in metres, measured from the southwest corner of the SV square. Note that 13 digits may be required for locations in Orkney and further north. For example the grid reference for Sullom Voe oil terminal may be given as HU396753 or 439668,1175316.

Another, distinct, form of all-numeric grid reference is an abbreviated alphanumeric reference where the letters are simply omitted, e.g. 166712 for the summit of Ben Nevis. Unlike the numeric references described above, this abbreviated grid reference does not contain enough information to specify a 100m square uniquely without additional context, and is therefore less useful. However, it is often used informally when the context already limits the location to within an area of less than 100 km in each direction. For example, within the context of a location known to be on OS Landranger sheet 41 (which extends from NN000500 in the south-west to NN400900 in the north-east) the abbreviated grid reference 166712 is equivalent to NN166712.

Summary parameters of the coordinate system

Datum: OSGB36,
Map projection: Transverse Mercator,
True Origin: 49°N, 2°W,
False Origin: 400 km west, 100 km north of True Origin,
Scale Factor: 0.9996012717,
EPSG Code: EPSG:27700
Ellipsoid: Airy 1830
Semi-major axis a: 6 377 563.396 m
Semi-minor axis b: 6 356 256.910 m
Flattening (derived constant): 1/299.3249646

Notes

  1. ^ OS Net, The true origin
  2. ^ "GPS and Positioning Services". Ordnance Survey.
  3. ^ Standing, 2006

References

See also

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ordnance_Survey_National_Grid&oldid=353892816"