UCL in the News: Want to see a great 3D model of London online? Ordnance Survey says no

Virtual London is partly derived from proprietary data owned by the government through its state-owned mapping agency, Ordnance Survey (OS). What makes the situation bizarre is that Virtual London's development was funded by another arm of the government, the office of the mayor of London.

Virtual London, developed by the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, represents all of the capital's boroughs in 3D, including 3m buildings. It was intended to help citizens visualise the impact of new developments and hazards such as air pollution and flooding. …

Virtual London contains spatial data derived from OS's MasterMap, the definitive crown copyright database of Britain. …

What they could not do was post Virtual London on websites for London's citizens to use.

For Virtual London's developers, this defeated the project's whole purpose, which was to help make urban planning more democratic. For the past year, they and Google have been trying to find a way to make the model available to all. …

The stumbling point is understood to be that Google wanted to make a one-off payment for the use of the MasterMap data, while OS wanted a per-user charge.

The UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis reported on its blog that "our Virtual London model will not be appearing in Google Earth due to data licensing issues". The decision "puts a stop to six years of research to openly inform the public about changes to London's built form via a publicly accessible model". …

Virtual London's chief developer, Dr Andrew Hudson-Smith, said the blame lay with Ordnance Survey's licensing practices, which he described as "quite frankly arcane in the digital world". He called for the government's Advisory Panel on Public Sector Information to look urgently at the issue. …

Michael Cross, 'The Guardian'