1Spatial in Cambridge, a leader in location-based information solutions, has won strategically important new business in France.

The comapny’s long-term, strategic relationship with IGN France has been strengthened further with the French national mapping agency widening its use of 1Spatial’s Radius Clarity technology.

The technology is playing a crucial role in IGN France’s New Base Map project, which has resulted in a new flowline for topographic map production at 1:25,000 scale and, if needed, at 1:50 000 scale.

The production flowline involves generalisation, the process of reducing the number of features within the source data and then modifying the way features appear on the map appropriately for a chosen target scale. Radius Clarity, as 1Spatial’s automatic platform for generalisation, therefore represents a key component in this project and one that IGN France has been able to integrate into their overall technology architecture.

The introduction of Radius Clarity has enabled IGN France to use a largely automated process to generate vector digital maps of similar quality to the previous series of manually produced topographic maps.

Automation has made the generalisation process quicker, reducing operational costs and time to market for the map series. At the same time, it has reduced the number of manual errors and increased the consistency in the map series.

Speeding up the process has only been possible through automation as it would have been too expensive to achieve the same results with a manual editing process. The new series of vector digital maps will cover 100 per cent of French territory, replacing the previous editions that only exist as raster files for 74 per cent of French territory.

Several additional Radius Clarity licenses have been bought by IGN France to enable it to build on this more efficient method of production by investigating new cartographic products and an additional production flowline based on new services for ‘maps on demand’. This will increase their product profile, enabling them to better meet the growing demands of their customer base.

Nic Snape, CEO at 1Spatial added: “We are pleased to be further strengthening our long-standing relationship with IGN France. Their new flowline demonstrates the unique capabilities of Radius Clarity to improve operational efficiency through automated processing and to increase the range of products that IGN France can offer the market.”

• Photograph shows: Nic Snape