Ordnance Survey has released data on over 40 million roofs in Great Britain into the OS National Geographic Database.

The OS NGD provides buildings intelligence on commercial, retail and residential constructions including material, age, number of floors, address count and basement presence.

OS now provides data on the predominant roof materials for 25 million addressable buildings, categorising them as thatch, waterproof membrane/concrete, fabric, glass/polycarbonate, green roof, metal or tile/stone/slate – helping insurers identify fire risks.

For the first time, OS has added data on the presence of solar panels – data that the OS hopes will “revolutionise insurers’ risk assessment” of solar panels. Around 5% of buildings (nearly 1.3 million) across Britain have solar panels, the majority of which are domestic installations. The new release also features data on the presence of green roofs, roof shape, and roof aspect.

John Kimmance, chief customer officer for OS, said: “This is the most significant collection of new and existing data for buildings in the OS National Geographic Database since it was created in 2022. With the addition of the new roof data, OS can support so many different sectors with achieving key insights and deliverables - from insurance and property to local authorities under pressure to meet biodiversity net gain targets.”

OS’s new roof data was captured almost entirely using automated feature extraction, with AI and ML methodologies deployed in some processes. 

Image courtesy Allianz

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