Zooming in on a map of the UK

1986 Domesday project information

Overview
The 1986 Domesday project
Technical details
Rescuing the data

900 years after the Domesday Book was written, the BBC commissioned a new survey. The map of the United Kingdom was divided into rectangles measuring 3km by 4km. A school, or group of schools took ownership of each of these rectangles and collected data about it. Typically this consisted of the type of land cover, how many amenities existed, a set of photographs and up to 20 pages of text. Over 14,000 schools and 2,000 other groups were involved in this massive data collection exercise. This data was recorded onto 2 discs:

The Community Disc

School children collecting data

This disc stores 25,000 maps covering the whole of the UK. For each map rectangle, there is a satellite image, up to 3 photographs, and twenty screens of descriptive text. This text - written by local people (often school children) - gives a picture of life in a particular community.

As the user zooms in on different areas of the map, different text and photographs describing that particular area are available. The content of the disc is fully searchable, so that a user can type in the name of a village, town or city, or indeed a grid reference, and they will be directed to the part of the map they are looking for.

The National Disc

This contains the land cover surveys, amenities counts, more maps and photographs, moving film, extracts from newspapers, and a mass of further information about the nation arranged into eight sections such as Leisure, Work, Industry, Society and Education. These sections are accessed by taking a virtual walk around a gallery that contains pictures representing different content themes.

Most information stored on the BBC Domesday project system is identified according to its location, making the BBC Domesday project one of the earliest examples of a Geographic Information System - a computer system that stores, manipulates, and displays geographically-referenced information. Geographic information systems are used in many fields including scientific research, resource management and development planning.

The following two articles explore the BBC Domesday project within this context:

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