What is British National Grid Reference System?

The British national grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references commonly used in Great Britain, different from using latitude or longitude.

The Ordnance Survey (OS) devised the national grid reference system, and it is heavily used in their survey data, and in maps (whether published by the Ordnance Survey or commercial map producers) based on those surveys. Additionally grid references are commonly quoted in other publications and data sources, such as guide books or government planning documents.

Two such systems exist: this article describes the one used for Great Britain and its outlying islands (including the Isle of Man); a similar system, used throughout Ireland (including Northern Ireland), is the Irish national grid reference system (used jointly by the Ordnance Survey of Ireland and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland).

General

The grid is based on the OSGB36 ™ datum (Ordnance Survey Great Britain 1936, based on the Airy 1830 ellipsoid), and was introduced after the retriangulation of 1936-1962.

The Airy ellipsoid is a regional best fit for Britain; more modern mapping tends to use the GRS80 ellipsoid used by the GPS. (The Airy ellipsoid assumes the Earth to be about 1 km smaller in diameter than the GRS80 ellipsoid, and to be slightly less flattened.) The maps adopt a Transverse Mercator projection with an origin at 49° N, 2° W. Over the Airy ellipsoid a straight line grid, the National Grid, is placed with a new false origin (to eliminate negative numbers), creating a 700 km by 1300 km grid. The distortion created between the OS grid and the projection is countered by a scale factor in the longitude to create two lines of longitude with zero distortion rather than one. Grid north and true north are only aligned on the 400 km easting of the grid which is 2° W (OSGB36) and approx. 2° 0' 5" W (WGS84).

OSGB 36 was also used by Admiralty nautical charts until 2000 after which WGS 84 has been used.

A geodetic transformation between OSGB 36 and other terrestrial reference systems (like ITRF2000, ETRS89, or WGS 84) can become quite tedious if attempted manually. The most common transformation is called the Helmert datum transformation, which results in a typical 7 m error from true. The definitive transformation from ETRS89 to OSGB36 that is published by the OSGB is called the National Grid Transformation OSTN02, and promises sub-metre accuracy.

Datum shift between OSGB 36 and WGS 84

The difference between the co-ordinates on different datums varies from place to place. The longitude and latitude positions on OSGB 36 are the same as for WGS 84 at a point in the Atlantic Ocean well to the west of Great Britain. In Cornwall the WGS 84 longitude lines are about 70 metres east of their OSGB 36 equivalents, this value rising gradually to about 120 m east on the east coast of East Anglia. The WGS 84 latitude lines are about 70 m south of the OSGB 36 lines in South Cornwall, the difference diminishing to zero in the Scottish Borders, and then increasing to about 50 m north on the north coast of Scotland. (NB. If the lines are further east, then the longitude value of any given point is further west. Similarly, if the lines are further south, the values will give the point a more northerly latitude.) The smallest datum shift is on the west coast of Scotland and the greatest in Kent.

For other co-ordinate systems, the shifts are different again. For example, Universal Transverse Mercator co-ordinates differ by many hundreds of metres, as UTM northings count from the Equator, and the notional OSGB 36 position of the Equator is many hundred metres north of that on WGS 84. Similarly, attempting to give British National Grid co-ordinates on the WGS 84 datum may give wildly discrepant results.

Datum shift between OSGB 36 and ED 50

These two datums are not really both in general use in any one place, but for a point in the English Channel halfway between Dover and Calais, the ED50 longitude lines are about 20 m east of the OSGB36 equivalents, and the ED50 latitude lines are about 150 m south of the OSGB36 ones.

Grid letters

For the first letter the grid is divided into squares of size 500 km by 500 km. There are four of these which contain significant land area within Great Britain: S,T,N, and H. (The "O" square contains a tiny area of North Yorkshire, almost all of which lies below mean high tide.^[1])

For the second letter, each large square is subdivided into 25 squares of size 100 km by 100 km, each with a letter code from A to Z (omitting I) starting with A in the north-west corner to Z in the south-east corner. The accompanying map shows the resultant grid, with the squares containing land lettered.

It would be possible to extend the grid system over Ireland, completing the S and N squares and introducing what would become the R and M squares (with the arrangement of first letters following the same pattern as for the second letter). However, there is no motion for this at the moment, and the accuracy of the projection would start to diminish in the west of Ireland, more than 8 degrees from the central meridian. Theoretically, the system extends far over the Atlantic Ocean and well into Western Europe with square AA near Iceland and square ZZ in northern Italy. In fact, Rockall is mapped by the Ordnance Survey, but is usually shown as an inset without gridlines on a mainland sheet. However, the grid can be extended to put Rockall in grid square MC as shown in this 1:50,000 mockup.

Grid digits

Within each square, eastings and northings from the origin (south west corner) of the square are given numerically. For example, NH0325 means a 1 km square whose south-west corner is 3 km east and 25 km north from the south-west corner of square NH. A location can be indicated to varying resolutions numerically, usually from two digits in each coordinate (for a 1 km square) through to five (for a 1 m square); in each case the first half of the digits is for the first coordinate and the second half for the other. The most common usage is the six figure grid reference, employing three digits in each coordinate to determine a 100 m square. For example, the grid reference of the 100 m square containing the summit of Ben Nevis is NN 166 712. (Grid references may be written with or without spaces, e.g. also NN166712.)

All numeric grid references

Grid references may also be quoted as a pair of numbers: eastings then northings in metres. Note that 13 digits may be required for locations in Orkney and north thereof. For example the grid reference for Sullom Voe oil terminal may be given as HU396753 or 439668,1175316.

Another, distinct, form of all-numeric grid reference is an abbreviated alphanumeric reference where the letters are simply omitted, e.g. 166712 for the summit of Ben Nevis. Unlike the numeric references described above, this abbreviated grid reference does not contain enough information to specify a 100m square uniquely without additional context, and is therefore less useful. However, it is often used informally when the context already limits the location to within an area of less than 100 km in each direction. For example, within the context of a location known to be on OS Landranger sheet 41 (which extends from NN000500 in the south-west to NN400900 in the north-east) the abbreviated grid reference 166712 is equivalent to NN166712.

Summary parameters of the British National Grid coordinate system:

Datum: OSGB1936,

Map projection: Transverse Mercator,

Latitude of Origin: 49,

Longitude of Origin: -2,

Scale Factor: 0.9996012717,

False Easting: 400000 m,

False Northing: -100000 m

Code: EPSG:27700

Notes

References

• Standing, Peter (2006) OV0000 a unique grid square at Beast Cliff, Geograph Project, UK, web article [accessed 11 June 2007]

See also

• World Geodetic System
• Maps of the UK and Ireland
• Irish national grid reference system
• United States National Grid
• Tetrad, Hectad, Myriad

External links

• Ordnance Survey Guide to the National Grid
• Ordnance Survey Guide to coordinate systems
• Programs to convert Ordnance Survey grid references
• Open Source Javascript Conversion Library
• GPL Java Conversion Library
• The sole part of Great Britain that lies in the OV square