FAQs - Mapping

The aerial photography used within the Active Places Power website is supplied via the Aerial Photography for Great Britain (APGB) contract; a pan-government agreement, managed by the Geospatial Commission.

Aerial photography is captured, processed and delivered by a consortium which includes Bluesky International Ltd, Getmapping Plc and Airbus.

Aerial photography, included within Active Places Power, is captured at a spatial resolution of 25cm. Photography will, in most regions, have been captured within the last 3-years although some variation is possible due to multiple factors including the weather and air-traffic restrictions.

To access the aerial photography when using the interactive maps, go to Map Tools tab > Map Layers > Basemaps and Aerial Photography.

The Active Places Power interactive mapping component displays several different Ordnance Survey datasets, which are styled and set to display at different zoom levels.

Datasets range from broad-scale location maps (for example, Miniscale) to highly detailed contextual mapping (for example, Vector Map Local and OS MasterMap).

All datasets are owned and maintained by Ordnance Survey © Crown copyright and database rights 2021. OS 100033111.

The data are supplied to Active Places Power via a series of Esri UK hosted web services . These services are updated on a quarterly basis.

Uses can choose between the following basemap styles.

 Grey

Greyscale map with no labels, provides a minimal level of contextual detail. Does not display at scales of 1:2,500 or 1:1,250

(References: OS_Open_Greyscale)

Simple

An uncluttered and clean map consistent between all viewing scales. Does not display at scales of 1:2,500 or 1:1,250

(References: OS_Open_Background)

Detailed

A comprehensive contextual map showing OS MasterMap level detail at the largest scales. This is the default basemap. Displays at all scales.

(References: OS_VML_MM_Carto Premium Service)

Traditional

Displays the OS 1:50,000, 1:25,000 and 1:10,000 raster products at larger scales. Does not display at scales of 1:2,500 or 1:1,250

(References: OS_Premium_Rasters Premium Service).

Active Places Power displays point based data for sport facility locations on the interactive map using balloon shaped map markers.  

To display map markers either run a search or report and swtich to the map tab to view results via a map interface.  Alternatively run a Map Search.  For all map interfaces the Map Tools tab (displayed on the left side of the map) has two sections.  Use Map Search to navigate the map or Map Layers to add and remove map data layers including, individual faciliity types.  

Due to the potential to represent a large number of facilities geographically on a map, a visual representation technique known as clustering is used. 

Clustering reduces the number of map markers displayed on the map by grouping those in close proximity to each other in an aggregate form.  Each map marker cluster contains a summary count of the number of facilities set to display.  

Clustered map marker balloons have four sizes:

• Small – no count represents a single count

• Small – with count represents between 2 to 9

• Medium – with count represent between 10 to 99

• Large – with count represents between 100 to 999

Zooming in to a more detailed large scale map will result in the dispersion of markers into individual marker locations.  The opposite is also true that zooming out to a small scale map will result in markers grouping together.  

Map markers that continue to display a count value at large map scales will represent sites with more than 2 facilities.  

It should be noted that a cluster map marker is generally located at the geographic centre for those dispersed individual locations grouped within the cluster. 

Only when the cluster represents a collection of facilities at a single site or the cluster representation is turned off will the map markers represent the exact geographic location of a site with multiple facilities.