QGIS – Accessing OS Open Data via ESRI Living Atlas

by David Crowther

Question:

How do you add OS Open Data to QGIS?

Answer:

If you are looking to harness the power of Open Source GeoSpatial tools to manage your own supply of OS Open Data, then here is a great BLOG article with lots of tips and tricks:

https://www.cadlinecommunity.co.uk/hc/en-us/articles/360000918518-OS-ZoomStack-Access-via-Desktop-and-webGIS-

However, if you want a very quick and simple method and are willing to have no control over styles etc…, then why not use the ESRI Living Atlas to access OS Open Data?

The ESRI Living Atlas is available here:

https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/en/home/

From the main page, choose Browse, change the category to be Basemaps and in the Search Bar type UK.

The list of available Services will then update to show you UK basemaps.

Some of the Services are either Feature Layers (generally WFS vector layers), or Web Maps (Web Map Projects created by Users), but we are interested in the Tile Layers.

After a little searching I found a number of these Tile Layers and in their Item Details is the URL that you need to Copy.

1 - OS Open Background – Vector Tile Layer:

https://tiles.arcgis.com/tiles/qHLhLQrcvEnxjtPr/arcgis/rest/services/OS_Open_Background_2/MapServer

2 - OS Open Grey – Vector Tile Layer in Grey:

https://tiles.arcgis.com/tiles/qHLhLQrcvEnxjtPr/arcgis/rest/services/OS_Open_Greyscale_2/MapServer

3 - OS Open Raster – Raster Tile Layer

https://tiles.arcgis.com/tiles/qHLhLQrcvEnxjtPr/arcgis/rest/services/OS_Open_Raster/MapServer

In QGIS these can be added via the Data Source Manager as an ArcGIS Map Server:

Once added, Connect to the Map Server and add the layer to the map and you now have OS Open Basemapping!

Adding the OS Open Raster Map Server then gives you the OS Raster basemaps for the UK!