The Office for National Statistics (ONS) are currently undergoing migration of their feature layers to ArcGIS Online. ONS services in the Living Atlas will be removed and replaced with new services. Read on to find out how it might affect you and what you need to do.
ONS in Living Atlas
Boundaries are integral to GIS as they provide the foundation for any map and spatial analysis, representing the limits of jurisdiction and can define ownership of resources. They are equally important in acting as a spatial constraint for geographic analysis. One of the most renowned custodians of boundary data is the ONS.
Counties and Unitary Authorities boundary dataset from the ONS in Living Atlas.
The ONS have been sharing their data to Living Atlas since 2018, currently making up 226 of the 634 datasets in the UK Living Atlas. These are generally made up of boundary layers, with some of the most popular ones including: ‘Counties and Unitary Authorities’, ‘Local Authority Districts’, and ‘Wards’. Several apps have also been created, such as the ‘Live Postcode Locator Tool’ and ‘Rural-Urban Classification’ to enable users to explore these boundaries data in a more interactive way. This content can also be found in their open data site, ONS Open Geography Portal. You can read more about ONS datasets in this blog.
What is happening?
The ONS are currently undergoing migration of their feature layers to ArcGIS Online. ONS services in the Living Atlas will be removed and replaced with new services. This process is expected to be completed in the next two weeks and the ONS will advise once all services and links are fully functioning.
How will it affect me?
As ONS datasets from Living Atlas will be removed and replaced with new services, any map or system using these will stop working until you swap to using the new services. Once the migration is complete, the new services will be published and discoverable in Living Atlas. ONS will provide further communications once the new links are fully functioning.
What do I need to do?
Keep an eye out for communications from the ONS on their social media platform (Twitter) if the services you use are affected. If they are, then please be patient whilst they are being re-directed. For any questions, please get in touch: DataCurator@esriuk.com
Now you’re up to date…
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