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Old 7th Nov 2021, 17:30
  #1967 (permalink)  
jimf671
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Location: Inverness-shire, Ross-shire
Posts: 1,460
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I have had a look at the mapping aspects of this matter.

OSI land mapping, of the kind one would expect for land SAR, does NOT include Black Rock. The nearest sheet stops at the western tip of the nearest mainland. I downloaded the digital version of the OSI mapping and although a detached piece of OSI's grid appears in the ocean where one would expect Black Rock to be, no land is shown at that location. I have established that this is not a historical omission caused by the previous rulers of Ireland since the OSGB maps held by the National Library of Scotland, and probably from surveys before 1913 but revised in the 1940s, DO include Black Rock, although not in great detail and probably without a spot height, although the NLS copy is not very legible in this respect.

None of the secondary mapping providers, such as Open Street map, show useful detail for Black Rock even though some show the buildings and helipad.

Worryingly, I also found an online map by SWC maps, that displayed a respresentation of Black Rock blessed with only a 10m contour line for height information. So there is information out there in the wild representing Black Rock as being between 10m and 20m in maximum height above the sea.

Contrast this with the situation in a neighbouring territory. Alisa Craig is an island that, just like Black Rock, is less than 10NM off the coast. Even secondary mapping like Open Street Map shows the spot height for the highest point on the island. The normal OSGB mapping that one would expect to use for land SAR shows information from a full survey with 10m contours and spot heights.

Similarly, considering an uninhabited and unexploited island, more than 30NM west of inhabited land, thus one that might be considered far less significant than Black Rock, Stac an Armin (extreme fragment of St Kilda), appears on OSGB mapping (including Landranger sheet 18 and digital versions) with 10m contours and a spot height and on Open Street Map with a spot height.

I note that the OSI website is illustrated with more than one image of surveyors working on rugged coastlines with boats. One might hope that these recent photographs have been made possible by a realisation that there are consequences to dismissing even one square metres of Irish land when one's reputation and sales are based on a centimetre-accurate mapping service.
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