Rumoured to be heading for George Osborne’s sell-off list,the mapping agency has plotted a route through the digital age to remain a unique asset On a housing estate in Southampton, surveyor Alyson Whiting is painstakingly recording the outline of a curved flowerbed. One of a small army of field workers for the Ordnance Survey, or she is using a tablet computer wirelessly linked to a satellite antenna atop a long pole – affectionately known among the national mapping agency’s staff as a “Gandalf stick”.
The agency’s headquarters previously stood on this site,but now red-brick family homes have sprung up. With them have advance recent roads, recent pavements, and recent addresses. Whiting diligently records the shape and size of them all.
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Source: theguardian.com