22nd September 2009 – The People’s Map has added new Administrative, Postcode and Health Authority boundary layers to its growing list of data products. Administrative layers include Unitary, County and Metropolitan Borough Councils. Postcode data includes areas, districts, sectors and centroids. Other boundary information includes Strategic Health Authorities and Primary Care Trusts, all supplied by People’s Map partner XYZ. These are all available for use in GIS and local information systems and in other digital file formats suitable for use in general office software and the web.   One of the first to benefit from this new data are Geowise who now offer a ‘Map Pack’ to compliment its InstantAtlas™ statistical visualisation platform. “Some of these layers are unique. The Map Pack we offer is the most cost-effective way of delivering ‘fit-for-use’ boundaries for InstantAtlas,” said Mike Forster Managing Director of Geowise.  

The People's Map is a web-based mapping project, which allows anyone to become part of the map creation and maintenance process simply by visiting the website, registering and then ‘drawing’ over Getmapping aerial photography. Users can map everything from roads and land use through to points of interest, using the simple online editing tools. Map makers, graphic designers and anyone wish to create their own maps can order base maps for areas of the People’s Map which are complete and then apply their own styling, changing colours altering fonts and line weights to suit. They can also add data to produce a map which is completely customised for their own specific application.   The People’s Map however grows in other ways providing a growing range of derived mapping products. These can be delivered as hardcopy, from 1:10,000 through to 1:1,000,000 scales, and in electronic raster and vector file formats. The map itself is also available as a web feed either through WMS or via the People’s Map Javascript API. Vector datasets now consist of the following data layers: Admin and Health Authority boundaries, including Postcodes, Buildings, Built Up Areas, Coastline, Contours, Drainage, Land use, Place name Gazetteer, Points of Interest, Roads and Railways. All these layers are available at all scales.