We are excited to let you know that new data has been added to the OS National Geographic Database (NGD) and is available for you to access today!

The Ordnance Survey is committed to delivering better data for their customers, and the addition of detailed roof attribution means that we can now offer the most comprehensive set of buildings data ever.

What new OS NGD data has been released?

OS NGD Buildings:

Roof material, aspect and shape
Presence of solar panels and green roofs
Building height for Buildings feature type
Access to key public buildings such as hospitals and shopping centres for vehicles and
pedestrians

OS NGD Land Use:

Sites (beaches, military training areas, wind farms)
Access purpose to key public sites

Other new data:

Tunnels (OS NGD Structures)
Street lights (OS NGD Transport Features and OS NGD Transport Networks)
Crowd Sourced Names, locally known and alternative names of features and landmarks (OS NGD Geographical Names)

If you are ready to start using the data, you can access it in the OS Data Hub today, you can take a look at the technical documentation on the OS NGD Documentation Platform, and download sample data from the OS website.

If you need to know more or want a quotation for your Area of Interest, just get in touch with the team at CDR Group – love to help.

(April 2025)

Precisely release MapInfo Pro v2023.1

As geospatial data grows, gaining meaningful and timely access to location-based context is increasingly challenging. Most GIS software is limited by its inability to process large volumes of data. Data is growing by the minute. Snowflake Data Cloud is leading the charge as the new data storage of choice.

To help users extract the most value from the spatial data while reaping the benefits provided by the modern cloud, MapInfo Pro can now open DBMS Tables from Snowflake, push down queries to Snowflake, and visualise the result on a map.
Besides support for Snowflake, this release also includes a major change in how we work with spatial databases. The Map Catalog is now optional. MapInfo Pro can now detect spatial data in tables without these being pre-registered in the MapInfo Map Catalog in the database.

If you look in the MapInfo Marketplace, you will also see that a couple of new tools have been added and some existing tools upgraded.

If you want to see the power of using MapInfo Pro in combination with Snowflake, check out this personalised demonstration: Using Snowflake from MapInfo Pro

Automatically Detect Spatial DBMS Tables

MapInfo Pro can now automatically detect spatial data in your DBMS tables. This is done when we load the list of tables in the Select DBMS Tables to Open dialog.
When you hold the cursor over a table in the Select DBMS Tables to Open dialog, it will show details about the table. This includes the number of records, the spatial type, and if the table is registered in the Map Catalog.

You can also inspect the table for spatial data if you query the database tables via the SQL Window. Again, the tables are inspected when the list of tables is loaded into the Table List in the SQL Window.

There is still support and recommend having the MapInfo MapCatalog in the database. This will make it easier for MapInfo Pro to work out the spatial data type for tables and it also allows you to set a default style to use when opening the table.

Getting Access to MapInfo Pro v2023.1

If you want to try out or upgrade your existing installation to the new release of MapInfo Pro, you can find the installers on the Precisely download page.

(March 2025)

CDR Group is now a Registered Supplier under the New Procurement Act 2023

The Procurement Act 2023 has arrived – brought into force on 24 February 2025, it implements new procurement rules for England, Wales and Northern Ireland that apply to those working in, or with, the public sector.
CDR Group is registered on the new Central Digital Platform, where all UK contracting authorities publish information relating to procurement. It is also where suppliers register, input and then share their commonly used information as part of the procurement process.

This follows on from our renewed place on the G-Cloud 14 Framework for Cloud Software. CDR are very pleased to offer Spectrum Spatial as a cloud based GIS application via the G-Cloud catalogue. Spectrum Spatial, from Precisely, is a powerful web mapping tool that can be accessed from any device in any location and has an intuitive interface that allows staff to jump straight into spatial data without any training. We already work with a number of public sector organisations and hope that being included in the governments procurement framework will give prospective customers the final vote of confidence they need to invest in CDR Group.

G-Cloud 14 is the fourteenth iteration of the G-Cloud framework. G-Cloud is open to all public sector bodies including central government, local government, third sector organisations, NHS and other health providers and education.
Just search for > Precisely Spectrum Spatial or > CDR Group in the category > Cloud Software

(February 2025)

New OS National Geographic Database updates

Ordnance Survey has developed an enhanced buildings dataset for Great Britain with contributions from UKBuildings, a land and buildings data solution from leading global data analytics and technology provider, Verisk.

The data was released in March 2024 with further enhancements in September and is available via the OS Data Hub.The enhancements have been delivered under the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement (PSGA), and can be accessed by OS Partners like CDR Group, for commercial licensing to clients and for free to over 6,000 PSGA members.

The OS NGD Buildings data has been enhanced to include the following information:

Building age - information on when a building was built;
Building construction material - information on the primary material from which the building is constructed.
Basement presence - information on whether a building has a basement and identified if the basement is a self-contained address.
Building description – OS data which provides a simple description to describe what the building is (for example, Detached House, Domestic Outbuilding, Education building).

A new building geometry representing the building footprint has been delivered, making it easier than ever before to select and analyse individual properties. This new geometry is also the foundation for multiple enhancements planned to provide more detailed attribution about the building.

Increased number of access locations to sites
Over 1.5 million new sites have been improved and supplied since 2022 and classified for this enhancement. This has brought the total number of sites contained within the OS NGD to 26 million. This increase means a greater number of access locations to sites has been provided, showing where vehicles and/or pedestrians can enter a site.

This is essential information for blue light responders on an emergency call, whether understanding where to access an area during a fire, incident or flooding, or dealing with threats from protesters for example, progressing through a large area.

It will also facilitate better emergency planning for those more complex sites with multiple access points, such as schools, hospitals, factories, and industrial sites. According to OS data, one of the sites with the most access points is Cannock Chase Country Park in Stafford, with just under 140, whether for pedestrians, or pedestrians and vehicles.

Bridge interactions
The presence of bridge interactions will now show where bridges exist with other networks (road, rail, or water) or footpaths. This will help emergency services identify the most efficient routes for reaching an incident by understanding where bridges exist with other infrastructure, eg a railway going over a road, planning the management of that incident, and the impact of any diversions over time. This new data, which shows approximately 660,000 bridge interactions in Great Britain (double the number of bridges), can also allow the analysis of high risk areas for incidents, for example where vehicles may be crossing a network. It will also enable the effective planning for events that need to be planned through a city, eg charity events, walks etc. Other uses will include better planning for maintenance, and health and safety inspections, where access to networks may impact on routine traffic.

Transport - Path Coverage Enhancements
OS has increased its coverage of Great Britain’s Path network, now capturing data for the whole of England, Scotland and Wales, whereas previously only urban areas were captured. This work has resulted in over 10 million new path features which equates to an increase of almost 35%.
These enhancements allow further analysis to be undertaken on how pedestrians complete routes using both the road and path network. This analysis supports Active Travel policies, improvements to public health and projects to encourage walking. All are aiming to reduce congestion, promote access to green spaces and improve routing analysis.

Transport – Pavement Presence Information
An additional significant update means that pavement width and their presence along roads are now available as additional attributions to the road network for the first time. This will benefit analysis relating to those using mobility scooters, wheelchairs or pushchairs. This also further enables councils to support key citizen services, such as maintaining and understanding their pavement assets.

Transport – Rail Network
Completing the transport portfolio for this release is the creation of a new generalised Rail Network for Great Britain. This network is the first of its kind to be released by Ordnance Survey and will allow customers to understand how well-connected areas are in relation to rail, understanding the transportation of goods, meeting their local transport needs, and also improve situational awareness for emergency services when attending emergencies on our rail network. The network also includes new attribution such as whether the rail network is used for freight, passengers or both and whether the rails are part of the mainline.

(October 2024)

New Release – HS Gridder v4

NEW RELEASE – HS Gridder v4 for MapInfo

The next addition of spatial analytics for Crime Analysis (or any incident data) with the arrival of the HS Gridder for MapInfo Pro from Portolan Technology.

HS Gridder is the ideal Hotspot Mapping accompaniment for MapInfo

HS Gridder is a MapBasic tool to assist with the spatial and temporal analysis of crime locations within a MapInfo Pro environment – it creates Hot Spot maps. It can also be applied to any other incident data with location and time attributes for deeper analysis thatn “just” location.

Originally developed for the Victoria Police Force in Australia, the software has since been deployed to other Police Forces including Surrey Police in the UK. The classic use of Kernel Density Estimation (KDE) for defining hotspots has since been enhanced by the latest crime analysis algorithm of the Getis-Ord Gi* routine to identify statistically significant hotspots.

New in Version 4

• Point Clusters feature uses the DBSCAN method to pick out groups of points and display a representative point and label it with the number of points in that cluster.
• L/M/E Hotspots, which will help to identify Long Term, Medium Term or Emerging Hotspots. This requires 12 months of data and will assess fortnightly intervals in the analysis.
  
  Mobile Phone Analysis using mobile phone data
  
  
• The Cell Sectors function will draw wedges indicating a direction from a tower;
• The Movement Links are drawn to indicate how a phone moves from one tower to the next over time;
  
• Summarise Time Labels will create stacked labels indicating times and frequency of call from a tower, as it also creates a manageable number of labels. CDR Group can provide instruction on how to animate mobile phone data, to display movement of the records over time.
  
  
  
  
  

CDR Group is pleased to be working within a partnership agreement with Portolan Technology to offer this software and related support services. Additionally, CDR offers a consultancy service to assist clients in achieving the very best results from their data using the powerful combination of MapInfo Pro plus
HS Gridder

(April 2024)

CDR Celebrate 30 years of being a MapInfo Partner

Back in 1994, we “discovered” the MapInfo software application. At the time Windows 3.1 was new!
We were used to bigger and more expensive GIS and CAD systems and we were a little sceptical about this “cheaper” product. So we invited the MapInfo UK team up to Hope to discuss where this might fit into our business.

Firstly, we were impressed that they managed to get through the 10 inches of snow that day!! We had been impressed by the data handling of both raster and vector data by MapInfo but we had some reservations about handling large amounts of engineering data, Ordnance Survey data and plotting to a large scale. Thirty minutes later and our reservations were put to bed – we just hadn’t explored all the features, being newbies.

We were invited to one of the first European Partner Conferences being held in Brighton that year, with a view to signing-up and also to speak with other Partners. That’s where we first met Bob Young of By Design and we talked about developing apps using MapBasic. After a few beers we were hooked. This was such a positive network and it was about to open a lot of new doors for us. We did sign-up as Partners the next day and a new adventure started.

These were the heady days when there was a huge expansion and adoption of GIS into many sectors in the UK. We sold a lot of copies of MapInfo, which was seen as a bit of a threat to other Partners but we settled into a recognition that there was plenty of business for everyone. Most Partners had specialisms or targets in certain sectors or had built niche applications. We have worked with other Partners, re-sold their apps or simply worked in parallel in the MapInfo environment. For CDR, our specialist subject is MapInfo itself and we enjoy sharing our knowledge through our training courses.

In the year 2000 we were awarded UK Partner of the Year and have received further accolades over the years, cementing our place as a trusted partner, consistently delivering an excellent service to our many customers. The company also achieved ISO9001 for operating a Quality Management System, which is audited annually by NQA.

MapInfo Corporation grew world-wide and added more products and data services offerings for their customer base. MapInfo is a complete desktop mapping solution for the GIS analyst and has the rare combination of being immensely powerful yet easy to use. With the exponential growth in location data the company developed web and enterprise solutions. In 2007, Pitney Bowes entered into a merger agreement to acquire MapInfo Corporation. Being part of a larger software division at Pitney Bowes, we saw the capabilities of the Spectrum technology platform to handle the growth of Big Data and adding Location Intelligence into that mix. New Addressing and GeoEnrichment capabilities could now handle billions of data records, not just millions.

2020 was quite a year for many. It also marked the merger of Pitney Bowes Software and Syncsort. In May, the new company was rebranded as Precisely. Now all of the Location Intelligence offerings are an integral part of the Data Integrity Suite. The modular, interoperable Precisely Data Integrity Suite contains everything you need to deliver accurate, consistent, contextual data to your business – wherever and whenever it’s needed.
30 years of change. MapInfo version 3 to MapInfo Pro v2023. Embrace the change and be prepared to adapt to it.

(March 2024)

Archived News

Misc
CDR Group Pick Up A Prestigous Web Mapping Oscar
CDR announce online Streetlight Fault Reporting facility

2005
Ordnance Survey Mapping Now Available to the NHS in England

2006
MapRite wins Innovation Award 2005
MapInfo Professional Maintenance Release and Google™ Earth Utility now Avaliable
CDR Group On Board With A Prestigious UKHO Contract
South Kesteven reaps the benefits of Location Intelligence
CDR Premier Partner Status
CDR Announce the Release of MapInfo Professional version 8.5
OSNI Launch Northern Ireland Mapping Agreement
CDR Group Planning To Put Barnsley on the map
MapInfo ProViewer version 8.5 now available
An Invitation to a Free 3-D Visualisation Seminar
CDR training courses now with added CPD
The Northern Regeneration Conference 24 - 25 October 2006
Darryl Beresford Is 40 And Survives Extermination

2008
No Excuses - Recycle Lamps
The user event you can't afford to miss
Benefits of licensed data
Dambusters remembered 65 years on
Introducing MapInfo Professional® 9.5
Matchmaking in Calderdale
CDR's New Scanning Capabilities
PlanWeb and PlanAccess CapableNew Stratus Gallery launched for INSPIRE
Upgrade those old licences to MapInfo 9.5 before Christmas
MapInfo Professional v9.5.1 Patch Release

2010
Consultation on access to Ordnance Survey data
MapInfo Professional v10.0.1 patch now available
HS Gridder version 2 released
Vertical Mapper version 3.7 released
Ordnance Survey Announces Availability of Free Digital Mapping
Aiming for Peak Performance
Introducing MapInfo Professional® v10.5
MapBasic and ProViewer v10.5 now available to Download
Crime Profiler version 1.1 released
Safer Derbyshire Partnership
New Open Source Workshop
MapInfo Professional v10.5.1 patch now available

2012
MapInfo Professional Patch Releases for v10.5.3 and 11.0.3 Now Available
Site Centred Mapping – Real Maps
MapInfo Professional Patch Release 11.0.4 Now Available
Summer News and Events
Moving in Maritime Circles
Introducing MapInfo Professional® v11.5
PB Encom’s Discover 3D updated
MapInfo Professional® Maintenance Release (v11.5.1) is Now Available
Mapping Showcase 2012 – Discover What’s New in Mapping Community
MapInfo Pro update for Microsoft Bing™ Service

2014
Building Height Attribute alpha release
Global Data Catalogue
Go Pro with the new 64-bit MapInfo Pro v12.5
Happy Birthday BASIC
Introducing MapInfo Professional version 12.5
Open-Source Software

2016
MapInfo Pro 15.2.2 has arrived
RouteFinder 5.00 for MapInfo Pro Released
See it faster. Solve it sooner with MapInfo Pro v16
Upcoming Events

2018
The Long Awaited Version17 Has Been Released Today (3rd May)
MapInfo Training Courses Updated For Version 17
CDR Group Has Been Awarded A Place On G Cloud 10
CDR's Quality System Updated And Audited
New Release Of Spectrum Spatial Analyst Web Mapping

2020
Statement on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
MapInfo® Pro v2019.1 Visualize data your way, right away
Precisely | Trust in Data
CDR Group has a renewed place on G-Cloud 12, the UK Government's cloud procurement framework
Precisely announces version 2019.3 of MapInfo Pro

2022
MapInfo Pro v2021.1 Released
Precisely Spectrum Spatial v2022.1 Released
CDR Group has a renewed place on G-Cloud 13, the UK Government's cloud procurement framework

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