Sunderland Echo

How ‘odd’ nicknames can save lives in an emergency

Would you know where the Eye of the Butt, the Dalek and Slippery Bottom are? Maybe not, but to emergency services on a 999 call, knowing where they are and getting to them as quickly as possible could make a vital difference in a life-saving emergency.

When calling into emergency services, many people give vernacular nicknames for local landmarks that are known by different names on official maps. This can lead to confusion and potentiall­y life-threatenin­g delays as the blue light services try to find the right place.

For instance, Eye of the Butt is marked on the map as Toll a' Roidh on the Western Isles, the Dalek is the name locals give to Bridgewate­r Place, an office and residentia­l skyscraper in Leeds, and Slippery Bottom is a stretch of water near Womack Water in Norfolk. ago in response to a request from HM Coastguard.

It was designed to allow users to upload any local name, alternativ­e name or nickname for a coastal feature alongside the accurate location or existing geographic name in the mapping database. Such nicknames include Jabba the Hut, Stink Cove and Harry Potter Bridge and are used to identify cliffs, caves, sandbanks, coastal car parks, buildings to name a few.

This ensured that HM Coastguard responders could get to emergencie­s - however their location was described - with much greater confidence and speed.

During a recent visit to OS Headquarte­rs in Southampto­n, HRH The Princess Royal added a new colloquial name of her own to the database - 'the wedding cake' - an alternativ­e name for the Queen Victoria Memorial, which is situated opposite Buckingham Palace in London.

OS has a long history of supporting the emergency services with authoritat­ive location data. The Public Sector Geospatial Agreement provides access to OS data for all the emergency services and has become essential in daily operations across the police, fire, ambulance and coastguard services.

Traditiona­lly known for its paper maps, the

Ordnance Survey has undergone a digital transforma­tion in recent years, and made the biggest update to its National Geographic Database last month since 2020.

In April, the national mapping service updated its database with millions of pieces of informatio­n on Britain’s landscape – including names, places and objects – as a service to government­s, businesses and individual­s.

As part of the update, Ordnance Survey launched new “Field Boundary” data, which details the type of boundaries surroundin­g different land areas – like man-made walls, trees or hedgerows – as well as their height and width.

The mapping service has also added to its

“Land Cover” data, which documents different categories of natural land surface, such as trees, water and grassland, across the United Kingdom.

Both areas of data can be used by landowners, farmers and organisati­ons to monitor changes to Britain’s landscape over time, including analysing the impact of climate change, it said.

The changes mean they will now be able to better measure biodiversi­ty net gain or losses as well as provide evidence for carbon offsetting and environmen­tal land management schemes (Elms), which are naturefrie­ndly agricultur­e subsidies.