OSNI 50K Grid: Tile Reference System for Northern Ireland Terrain Data

OSNI Open Data provides a 50K tile grid covering Northern Ireland as a reference system for downloading 50m Digital Terrain Model (DTM) data. The grid consists of 17,335 tiles, with urban areas covered at 1:1250 scale and rural areas at 1:2500 scale. The dataset is published by the Government Digital Service under an open government license.

Use Cases

• Spatially index and download 50m DTM tiles based on the provided grid reference system.
• Perform regional analysis by aggregating or comparing data across the defined urban (1:1250) and rural (1:2500) tile scales.
• Create web maps or desktop GIS applications that reference the standardized Irish Grid coordinate system.

Strengths

• Provides a complete spatial reference of 17,335 tiles covering all of Northern Ireland.
• Explicitly defines tile scales and physical dimensions: 1:1250 tiles cover 0.6 km x 0.4 km, and 1:2500 tiles cover 1.2 km x 0.8 km.
• Available in multiple geospatial formats including GeoJSON, ESRI Shapefile, and KML for interoperability.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service

Collection Method

Published by OSNI (Ordnance Survey Northern Ireland) as part of its open data initiative.

Time Range

null

Freshness

Last updated date is unknown.

Geography

Northern Ireland