The millennium This article is more than 24 years old

What is the Millennium Map?

This article is more than 24 years old

The Millennium Map is a modern day hi-tech Doomsday Book. Using the latest digital cameras, a team of pilots have spent months photographing the whole of Britain from the air to produce a record of every building and field. Recent advances in technology have made it possible for the vast amount of data they have collected (20 terabytes, or about 5,000 times the amount of information that can be accommodated on the hard disk of a modern PC) to be compressed and stored in a computer's memory. The result is that visitors to the company's website will be able to view the whole of England on a scale of one to a million, or zoom in on a single house at a scale of less than one to 1,000.

Until now few people other than local authorities and the military have had access to aerial photography of the country. The aim of the owner, Tristram Cary, and his partner, Joe Studholme, is to make high quality photos available to ordinary people at a reasonable price. Customers will be able to type a postcode into the website and order a picture of their house, school, or neighbourhood for £17.50.The map will be updated every five years and provide a record which will enable environmentalists to track changes, such as the loss of habitats, or the number and size of brownfield sites, and traffic density. The Millennium Map can be viewed at www.getmapping.com/ from January 31.

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