National mapping agency

A national mapping agency is an organisation, usually publicly owned, that produces topographic maps and geographic information of a country. Some national mapping agencies also deal with cadastral matters. According to 2007/2/EC European directive, national mapping agencies of European Union countries must have publicly available services for searching, viewing and downloading their spatial data. Maps produced by some of them are available under a free license that allows re-use, such as a Creative Commons license. The first national mapping agency was the Ordnance Survey in the United Kingdom; its roots go back to 1747, when the compilation of a map of the Scottish Highlands was proposed. This survey at a scale of 1 inch to 1000 yards (1:36,000) was the starting point of the Principal Triangulation of Great Britain (1783–1853), and led to the creation of the Ordnance Survey itself; work was begun in earnest in 1790, when the Board of Ordnance began a national military survey at one-inch-to-the-mile (1:63,360 scale). During the next thirty years, roughly a third of England and Wales was mapped (see Principal Triangulation of Great Britain), as other military matters took precedence. Topographic map and Map series Although virtually the entire terrestrial surface of Earth has been mapped at scale 1:1,000,000, medium and large-scale mapping has been accomplished intensively in some countries and much less in others. Nevertheless, national mapping programs listed below are only a partial selection. Several commercial vendors supply international topographic map series. The NMIG (National Mapping Information Group) of Geoscience Australia is the Australian Government's national mapping agency. It provides topographic maps and data to meet the needs of the sustainable development of the nation. The Office of Spatial Data Management provides an online free map service MapConnect. These topographic maps of scales 1:250,000 and 1:100,000 are available in printed form from the Sales Centre.