OSNI 50K Grid: Northern Ireland Tile Reference System for DTM Download

Northern Ireland is covered by a reference grid of 17,335 tiles published by the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI). This dataset shows the location of each 50K tile, which can be used to download corresponding 50m Digital Terrain Model (DTM) data. The grid is referenced to the Irish Grid, with urban areas at 1:1250 scale and rural areas at 1:2500 scale.

Use Cases

• Creating a tile index for batch downloading 50m DTM data based on the grid coverage.
• Spatially joining other geospatial datasets to the standardized OSNI tile grid based on the Irish Grid reference.
• Visualizing the density and scale variation of mapping tiles across Northern Ireland based on the described urban/rural coverage.
• Developing automated workflows to fetch terrain data for specific grid tiles based on the published reference system.

Strengths

• Provides a structured reference system of 17,335 tiles covering all of Northern Ireland.
• Explicitly defines tile dimensions: 0.6 km x 0.4 km for 1:1250 urban tiles and 1.2 km x 0.8 km for 1:2500 rural tiles.
• Published under the Open Government Licence for broad reuse.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI), aggregated via Government Digital Service.

Collection Method

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Time Range

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Freshness

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Geography

Northern Ireland