New mapping service available – Free to FE colleges across the UK

Jisc have launched a free geospatial data service for further education (FE) colleges to support their data and mapping needs across a variety of subjects.

The new service developed by Airbus, in conjunction with Jisc and its members, will give UK FE colleges free access to unprecedented mapping capabilities for the next three years.

Whether it’s History students studying settlements or Geography students exploring population data, the service can accommodate their various needs through an easy to use interface which also performs well on tablets, and even smart phones.

Paul Russell, Deputy Managing Director of Intelligence (UK) at Airbus said:

“We wanted to create a state-of-the-art tool that gives students the benefits of our experiences and knowledge and this service, also available to higher education, is industry leading. We are really pleased that Jisc can offer the service to their further education members for free for the next 3 years. Students, and subsequently our engineers of the future, deserve to have access to the latest technology to help advance their future careers”

Keith Cole, Executive director of digital resources at Jisc added:

“It’s great to be able to announce this new commercial quality service and we’re really pleased we can offer it to FE colleges for free as part of their Jisc subscription.  Normally these types of services come at a cost that’s beyond our members budgets, but in partnering with Airbus we benefit from their specialism in Earth observation and can pass this onto the students, which is ultimately what it’s all about.”

Jisc’s Geospatial data service is a complete bundle for FE that consolidates the range of geospatial services from Jisc Collections into a single package that is available for FE Colleges for FREE. The bundle consists of the following geospatial services; Ordnance Survey Collection, Aerial Photography, Historic, Geology, Marine and Environmental.

For more information and an introductory webinar about the service capabilities, visit www.jisc.ac.uk/geospatial-data