Ordnance Survey releases new roof data for over 40 million buildings

The new information will enhance an already comprehensive buildings dataset.

Ordnance Survey (OS) has just released data for over 40 million roofs in Great Britain into the OS National Geographic Database (OS NGD). The new data will benefit a wide range of sectors, from sustainability and energy, insurance and property to emergency services.

The new roof attributes introduce unprecedented insights into roof shape, aspect, material, green roofs and presence of solar panels. It was almost entirely captured using automated feature extraction, utilising Machine Learning methodologies in some processes.

The OS NGD already holds a vast amount of information on buildings, including their use (e.g., commercial, retail, residential), construction material, age, number of floors (47 million in total), address count, and basement presence.

All of these features are available in the OS NGD Buildings theme alongside the brand new roof enhancement data. They can be cross-referenced with other OS NGD themes such as Address and Land Use to unlock valuable insights that can support projects and businesses across the public and private sector.

John Kimmance, Chief Customer Officer at OS recently said:

"This is the most significant collection of new and existing data for buildings in the OS National Geographic Database since it was created in 2022. With the addition of the new roof data, OS can support so many different sectors with achieving key insights and deliverables – from insurance and property to local authorities under pressure to meet biodiversity net gain targets. And we’re not stopping here—more building datasets are in the pipeline for future release."

Roof shape and aspect – to support risk assessment and retrofitting

OS’s new roof data includes:

Roof shape: identifying whether a roof is flat or pitched, which helps assess water ingress risk for insurance purposes and supports carbon net zero initiatives, retrofitting and solar panel suitability.

Roof aspect: determining the predominant orientation in eight directions (eg north, northeast, east), supporting green energy planning and wind and storm risk modelling for insurers.

The enhanced roof data allows for better building representation by modelling roof shape, benefitting industries like architecture and urban planning.

Roof material – from fire risk to green energy planning

OS now provides data on the predominant roof materials for 25 million addressable buildings, categorising them as waterproof membrane/concrete, fabric, glass/polycarbonate, green roof, metal, thatch, or tile/stone/slate (on 92% of buildings).

This data will support multiple sectors to:

Help identify fire risks (e.g. listed buildings and thatched roofs).

Support green energy solutions by mapping solar panel and green roof potential.

Aid in heat loss modelling for energy efficiency planning and maintenance.

Improve mobile network planning, helping determine suitable locations for infrastructure.