Boundary data from MapMechanics puts postcodes in geographical context

Feb. 25, 2013 - PRLog -- For businesses doing geographically-based planning and analysis at regional and local level, an appealing new option for mapping postcode data, offering greater accuracy and detail than rival systems at a more competitive price, is now available from MapMechanics, one of the UK’s leaders in digital mapping and related data.

The ForGIS Sector District & Boundaries UK data set contains geographical boundaries for three key components of UK postcodes – sectors, districts and areas. Examples of these are RG40 1… (postcode sector), RG40… (postcode district) and RG… (postcode area).

The ForGIS data is now available through MapMechanics’ fully-transactional data web site, http://www.allmapdata.com.

Boundaries in this data set are digitised at a 1:10,000 scale, plotted against detailed Ordnance Survey mapping. This approach gives the data a high degree of accuracy, helping to ensure that postcodes are shown in the correct sector. It also means that as soon as the data is displayed on screen, users can see the extent and location of each polygon on a map.

The data set includes postcode counts for each boundary (the number of postcodes falling within it), which makes it ideal for functions such as territory management and thematic mapping, where colouring or shading is used to differentiate polygons according to their content. For instance, it might be used to show how many customers or competitors fall within a given postcode area, district or sector.

The data also includes postcode centroids (centre points within each boundary from which measurements can be taken consistently). This means it is particularly well suited to use in geographic information systems to create distance matrices or calculate drive times.

The ForGIS data set is one of the very wide range of digital map data, commercial data and demographic data available on MapMechanics’ marketing-leading mapping and GIS web site, www.allmapdata.com, which includes details, examples and illustrations of hundreds of data products, along with information about their possible use.