Summary
The webinar introduces the Land App, a mapping platform, and explains its purpose and features.
Creating Plans: The webinar demonstrates how to create plans by loading data, defining boundaries, and using various tools like buffering and splitting.
Working with Data Layers: Users can toggle and interact with different data layers, such as land covers and ownership information, to gain insights and make informed decisions.
Professional Subscription: Professional subscribers have additional features like data layer reports, which allow them to analyse specific data within their boundaries.
Collaborative Functionality: Users can collaborate with others on the web app, allowing teamwork on projects and data sharing. However, the mobile app requires a subscription for use.
Printing: Printing is available for free users but may incur royalties for certain base maps, like OS (Ordnance Survey) mapping.
Transcript
Transcript
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for joining today. We've got our first session of 2023, which is an introductory training session on the Land App. I'm Dan Geerah, The Innovation and Partnerships Lead here at the Land App. Today, I'll be hopefully explaining to a lot of new faces what our mapping platform is, but also giving those a refresher that have used the platform before.
So, the agenda for today: we're going to spend just five minutes introducing the Land App because I'm aware that there are a lot of new faces here. This will cover what the Land App is and who we are. We'll then spend about 40 to 45 minutes diving into the free functionality of the Land App, which we've called Land App 101. This includes creating an account, navigating the user interface, importing and exploring our data library, and also running reports. We've then just pencilled in some time, about 15 minutes at the end, just to give you an understanding of the benefits of upgrading to our professional subscription. So, we do have a subscription tier above the free use, and I just want to spend 15 minutes explaining those. We then have, depending on how we are with time, you know 15 to 20 minutes to go through any questions that you've got through the Q&A functions, and my colleagues Tristan and Rosie are manning the Q&A throughout the session as well.
Before we start, also worth noting that if you've got any other feedback, you're welcome to email support at thelandapp.com who will be able to answer any questions you may have about your particular use case or other.
So, what is the Land App? The Land App is an easy-to-use mapping platform that's been around since 2016. We're part of the initial Geovation program through Ordnance Survey, but we are now our own independent company that's trusted by professionals across the country. We are a technology platform that's really trying to put all the right relevant data in the hands of the relevant people to make decisions on the ground in respect to sustainable land use and profitable businesses. Ultimately, we want to put the right data in the hands of the right people, connect up the right people with advice and incentives, and ultimately help you, landowners, or your clients, make the decisions on the paths they want to take. We really feel our role is to try and help a digital transition. We're aware, especially in the agricultural sector and in other sectors, that there is turbulence at the moment, but we fundamentally believe a tool like the Land App can really help catalyse the change that we all want to see. We feel very privileged to be partnering with a number of well-known organizations, land agencies, Wildlife trusts, Farm clusters, Estates research bodies, supermarkets, government agencies, and we really look forward to partnering with more. We really wouldn't be in the position we are without our customers, and we're fully grateful for all the feedback, suggestions, ideas that you've given, and we're really looking forward to seeing where we're going in the future. Another little nod to our data providers again, we don't really create much data ourselves, but we do rely on third parties to create data, and we pride ourselves on our Integrations that we've got with all these numerous agencies across the country and beyond. During the demo, I'll explain a bit more about these data layers, but you know we cover everything from designations, habitats, and Market incentives, and we're putting it in a single place with a live feed. So, if yesterday one of these agencies updated their data, the Land App should reflect that as of today.
What I want to do now is first just move across to the website, thelandapp.com, whereby I will just give you a bit of a tour of the interface and just give you a bit of a navigation of our website and what you can find there. We found out thelandapp.com. So, I'm currently sat on Google Chrome, thelandapp.com. We do work on all other browsers, so that could be Microsoft or Safari. Here you can explore a number of different web pages, including some case studies and functionality for particular use users, ecologists, farmers, estates, land agents, etc. We've got a growing Community page which contains a lot of blogs, our events, so if you've not registered for some of the upcoming events, those that you can find within our community page, and we've also got other pages on functions, pricing, and a contact page as well.
If you haven't got an account with the Land App, what you first need to do is come to the website thelandapp.com and hit sign up. Once you click that button, you'll be met with a form. Hopefully, it's relatively self-explanatory. It does require an email address and a password, and we also ask a couple of questions around what sector you're in just for marketing purposes.
Once you've got an account and you log in, you'll be either met with a map in front of you (which I'll come on to in a moment) or if you've previously registered and you log in now, you might be met with a similar page that you can see, which is an individual map called "New Map One" with your name and the date that the map was created.
The first thing to say is some of you might have been referred to the Land App by an external colleague, client, friend, neighbour, and if you're trying to find the maps that they have invited you to, you will need to go to the "Shared with Me" button at the top of your screen. In there, you'll be able to see all of the different maps that have been shared with you by external collaborators, and I'll come on to the collaboration in a moment.
Also, worth saying that we have an archive function, so rather than automatically deleting maps, we encourage (and we only allow) users to archive their data first, which we then hold for a set period of time before we delete it. The reason for that is, we've had people in the past delete data, and we couldn't get it back. So, we no longer delete things instantly; we will hold it in the archived section for you so you can self-serve and retrieve anything that you might have accidentally deleted.
On the "My Maps" tab, which is this first one I've got at the moment, you might have more than one thumbnail across your screen with different names, different collaborators, and you might have different missions on those as well. Each of these thumbnails represents a management unit, so that's a particular holding or area of interest that could be a farm, Nature Reserve, or an estate, and that, therefore, needs a unique name. The first thing to say is that I would encourage you to click the three dots if you've got "New Map," and in that three dots, there's a button called "Edit" where you can change the name of your map. I'm going to call it "Demo Map March 2023."
Right, I think it's time to jump in and do a bit of mapping. So, I'm going to double-click on the thumbnail, and what that does is that then loads my map over Birmingham with the base map that I previously used. At the moment, I have a base map called "Ordnance Survey Lite," and this is a base map that is available to all users to a certain zoom level (I'll come on to that in a moment). You can change the base map by clicking the "Ordnance Survey Lite" button at the top, and that gives you a drop-down of all the various base maps that we host.
We've got a combination of free base maps, such as OpenStreetMap, which is a crowd-sourced-based map that you can zoom in. I'm currently using my mouse wheel on my mouse to zoom in and out, but you can also zoom in and out using the plus and minus at the bottom of your screen. So, you've got OpenStreetMap. The other three maps include some imagery, so we've got Mapbox imagery and Bing imagery, which again you can interact with by zooming in with your cursor, and as you zoom in, the image might get clearer. These images are updated every three years depending on where you are in the country, they might be three years out of date, and that's provided by Microsoft.
There's also this section of maps called "Freemium," so we've got maps from our data provider Ordnance Survey, and they give us the data in what we call a "Freemium" state, which means that at certain zoom levels, you can access it for free. So, if I turn on the data like this, it should load. Hopefully, there we are. That's then loaded. What is free for me to use, you can see I can scroll around an Ordnance Survey at this level. However, as I'm on the free platform at the moment, I'm only entitled to free data up to a certain zoom level. Once I get past zoom level 10, the map will go blank for me because the data is now premium. So, I've got something called "insufficient credits." If you are using the free products and you do want to use Ordnance Survey data, you can click the green button and add OS credits. It's kind of a little token that just gets used as you scroll around the map and browse. But be aware, as you top up, the more you zoom in and out, the more data that's being processed, and therefore, those credits can go down quite quickly. That principle works for this Ordnance Survey color, Ordnance Survey Lite, which is a grayscale map, exactly the same data, and we've also got Ordnance Survey Leisure as well, which is the one that you're familiar with if you're doing any orienteering, for example.
Now, that's interesting. Here we are. There's a slightly different zoom level to the Leisure map than there is for the OS Master map. It's just worth noting. The other type of data that we have, alongside base maps, we've also got this column called "Data Layers." As I just showed on the slides, we've got a growing library of data from providers, whether it's government agencies, research bodies, or people that are generating market incentives. You can access our library by clicking on the "Data Layers" button, and that reveals a drop-down list of categories. Now, we host the data layers in what we call an "accordion" shape, which means that you can click on one of these categories, and that will then open up all those layers relevant to that category. So, in "Designations," for example, I've got the "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty." If I turn that on by clicking on it, the word goes black rather than grey, and you can see that it's now loaded up the boundary of an AONB. I can click on that shape because we host the data in a format called "Vector," which means that you can click on the shape and learn a bit more. In comparison, if I'm trying to click on the base map, that's an image, and I can't click on that data. So, all of our data layers are clickable, so to speak. In this example, I've clicked on the Shropshire Hills. I've got a designation date, so it's designated in March 1959, but I've also got other attributes that I can use, such as a hyperlink to further information, so I can click on that and learn a bit more about the Shropshire AONB, and I can also click on the hyperlinks to the source data as well.
So, if you're trying to understand where that data file came from, how it was generated, how regularly it is updated, do go into the source data. Other data layers, you know, feel free to turn them all on. On the free software, you'll be told if you're going to be charged. All of the data layers that you can see are free for you to use. So, do feel free to come in, toggle on different data layers. We try and update them as regularly as we can, but we appreciate that at the moment, there's a lot of new data that's coming through, so just bear with us if there's a particular data set that you've been requesting.
So worth noting that you can toggle on more than one data at the same time. For example, if I toggle down a couple of these heritage sites, battlefields, etc., and zoomed in, you can see that my computer's starting to get a little bit slower because the Land App is trying to render a lot of data, and there's a lot going on. So, if you feel like your computer's getting slow, just double-check how many data layers do you have turned on. Now, just to be aware, my head might be floating on top of the data layers, but if it is, it won't be in the recording. There is a button that's called "Data Layers," but also on the top right of that button, there's also the number of layers that I've got turned on, which at the moment is four. You can turn them off as I've been turning them on by just clicking on them. However, there is also a reset button at the top right which just resets the data to have none turned on. Okay, so that's data layers and base maps. There are quite a few other icons that I'll come onto a bit later.
But what I want to do now is just start by creating a plan. Everything on the land really starts when you've got an area of interest, whether that's a county boundary or a farm boundary. So, I'm just going to start by showing you a basic workflow for how you can load up data, find a site, and create a boundary file.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to first get a postcode, which I've got prepared here, in Blue Peter fashion, and I'm going to use the search bar at the top of the map. I'm going to paste in my search for a site that you, Land App users, might be familiar with in Surrey. You can see I hit that error message there because I'm still on the free product and I don't have any OS credits, so I've just flicked to a free one. I might actually use Bing imagery because it's slightly more visual. Anyway, I'm now going to create an ownership boundary first using the HM Registry title data. The Land App has an annual subscription with the Land Registry, and we host all of the land title data within our database, and you can access that by first hitting this "New" button at the top left. Secondly, you want to go down to the "Import Data" button, and in the import data, there are four different ways that you can bring data into the Land App. I'm going to be choosing the first one now, and I'll come back in probably five or ten minutes and show you the import from the repayment agency, but while I'm here, just to say that we also allow you to import data from other GIS systems. So, if you can get a file in a shape format or a GeoJSON format, you can drop it onto the map using the import file button, or you can import from an existing plan, which at the moment we don't have.
So, I'm going to hit "Pick from Land Registry." What that then does is it tells the Land App to please load all the Land Registry parcels in my view. You can see now I've got a bit of a red screen, and apologies for anyone who has slight colour blindness; we are working on improving the contrast between the red and the orange that happens when I click on the polygon, but that has been noted, so thank you for the feedback on that. But what you can see is as I scroll around, it constantly loads all the polygons, the outlines of all the different ownership titles that are within my view.
On the top left, you can see here that the little pop-up has asked me, "Do I want to select all parcels within the title?" By default, that is switched on, and what that means is when I click on one polygon, it will actually select multiple polygons that are joined by the same title number. Okay, so at the moment, I've selected this one, and this little strip down at the bottom is actually under the same title number. Just to demonstrate, if I toggle that off and then I click on this polygon again, it hasn't highlighted in orange that little segment down at the bottom. So, depending on what your use case is, you may want to keep that toggled on or off, but for this demo, I'm just going to select all the parcels, all the titles within that parcel.
Once you've done that, you've now defined your boundary, but the Land App needs to know why. Why do you want to use that boundary? One of the reasons that Land App is becoming more and more trusted in the sector is because we force people to use templates. We don't just allow people to create their own maps without first asking what that workflow is about. So, we have what we call plan templates for a number of different workflows. I think we've got about 16 or 17, and we won't be touching all of them today, and some of them are government processes, such as Countryside Stewardship, which I think we've got a webinar coming up relatively soon. If you can't see all of the templates, by the way, if you change the system suggestions through this drop trial drop down, you get different templates. But you can see that we've got blank, basic payment, purchased stewardship, etc. But for this demonstration, I just want to create an ownership boundary, which is here at the bottom left. So, I'm choosing ownership boundary, and that then is the final step of my stepper, which means I can give it a name like "Ownership Boundary," hit finish, and now I've got a red line boundary for my area of interest that's based on HM Registry Land Title data.
The next thing that I may want to do is style the map. In this workflow, I'm going to try and get to a point where it's ready for printing, and what I can do is I can either style individual shapes. So, at the moment, I've only selected one of my three polygons, but I'm just going to click on one to start with, and what that does on the right-hand side is brings up our what we call right-hand panel. This is where all of the data editing happens. I'm just working from the top to bottom, really.
So, the green button, which says "Change," is the first call to action, and that's basically saying, "Can you define for me what this shape is?" And that principle happens across all of our templates. But when I click "Change" on the ownership boundary, the only options we've got are "Area," which is just a default red, and we've got "Ownership Boundary," which is a red line boundary. Depending on what template you've used, if you hit "Change," for example, in a Countryside Stewardship template or the Baseline Habitat Map, you'll be given a lot more optionality for what you're assigning that feature to. But the ownership boundary is the basic category for this template.
Not only can I assign that polygon to "Ownership Boundary," which is then updated in a bit of code called the metadata, but it's also you can change how that polygon looks. So, at the moment, even for my eyes, there's not enough contrast or depth between the red line and the background map, so you may want to change the styling, and you can do that by hitting the "Style" button. In there, you're met with three main sections: the fill, the pattern, and the border, and you can also change the opacity as well. So, even if I just simply change the opacity, you can see that that ownership boundary is now being filled with the white. The lower it goes, the more transparent that feature is, so you can really toggle around and play with that ownership boundary and change its fill, its styling, etc.
Let's take that one step further. You can be very creative, so let's just hypothetically say I want a deep green. You can actually go into this pattern section and add different patterns onto that green, and for example, I could put little polka dots, and I can make those polka dots yellow. So, I'm now just styling that map how I want, giving you a bit of flexibility in creating a bespoke colour scheme for your map.
The final one that you can do is the border. So, if I mentioned that red line was quite thin, in the Border section, you can do a couple of things like change the width. So, if I move that up to seven, you can see I've now got a thick red border around the outside of my feature. If I go back into Style again and border, I can then bring that down. Other things you can do are not to label the point; you can change and make it a dash-dash red line around the outside; you can change the colour of that red line as well to a black line. So, hopefully, you've got a bit of freedom to start creating a bespoke project and the bespoke colour scheme for your map.
Now, I've been quite artistic, and I must admit I don't really like what I've done, so I'm going to go back into Style, and you can, as per the data layers, just reset the style, and that will bring it back to its default. It will bring it back to what the Land App's default styling is for an ownership boundary. That brings me on to just introducing a button that I'll probably be using quite a lot during this session, which is the undo button.
Exactly like you're in Google, we've got an undo button that will just go back to the last action, and you can click through those. You can see that I'm going back through all the different styles that I've made. So, I'm going to click, and you can see all the different things that happen, and exactly the opposite, you can redo as well, which is the button next to it that just goes back through all the undo’s I've just done. Okay, worth noting that the Land App auto-saves every time you make a change. So, anytime you change the colour, we auto-save it to our database, which means that we can allow you to undo/redo. However, if you were to come out of your map, either closing the web browser or clicking the little Land App logo at the top, like so, and going back into your map, you no longer can undo/redo. Those changes have been saved. So, just a note, one of my top tips is if you're panicking, please don't exit the map. Just take a deep breath, and you can undo/redo rather than exiting the map or going to your home page or hitting refresh.
So, let's reset the style for one polygon. Just to take that one step further, you can change the style for multiple polygons at the same time. So, for example, I want to style my three blocks of land all the same. I can either hold Shift on my keyboard and then select the other two. So, I'm holding Shift, select one, select two, and I can then go into my styling, change the opacity, and give them a colour. Or the other way of doing it is you can actually select all feature types by right-clicking on a feature and then hitting the "Select Feature Type" button. Now, that "Select Feature Type" button only works when they've all got the same code. So, at the moment, these two polygons haven't been given the "Ownership Boundary" code; they've got no code name at the moment. But if I did give them the "Ownership Boundary" like so, and then select feature type, I've selected all my ownership boundary polygons.
And that may not seem too powerful when you've just got three polygons, but you can imagine if you've got a massive estate mapped with 50 different crop codes in a thousand different polygons, it is quite useful to be able to select all winter wheat, and it just highlights all the winter wheat for you or select all Woodland, and therefore you can change the styling, add a label, etc., on mass, in bulk.
All right, one final point is that I've obviously done that first workflow, and it may have then occurred to me as I was zooming in that I've completely forgotten about a particular block of land. I've chosen my ownership boundary, but I forgot about this Woodland I didn't include in my initial workflow. Not to worry, what we've done is we're in the data layers section at the top right, we do host all of those Land Registry parcel data layers inside the ownership category. So, if you go into "Ownership" and turn on "Freehold" probably or "Leasehold," you can see that now it's rendered that polygon of Woodland that I'd forgotten. All you need to do is select the polygon, right-click on it, and then you're met with just one icon, which is "Copy to Plan." And then you can choose which plan to bring it over to, which at the moment, I've only got one, which is "Ownership Boundary." But then I copy feature to plan, I've now got that polygon that I can change the styling of. But just be aware, we do get a couple of support requests, I've still got this Land Registry boundary turned on in the background, so do remember to go back to Land Layers and reset. And you can see now I've gained an extra polygon. I'm just going to reset this red styling because it's causing me a bit of offense. Keep that. Finish your boundaries. Okay, so what we've got is we've now got four different polygons, we've got an ownership boundary, and I'm now fairly happy to start creating a professional-looking print.
So, what I want to do is just tidy this up a little bit, which just means maybe making the border of that red line slightly deeper red and a slightly thicker red, making sure that I've got labels turned on for everything like all the areas, and turning off those ownership codes and having just title numbers turned on. Okay, so I've now got four different title numbers, I've got a bit of a basic red line boundary, and I'm now ready to print this.
The print function, which is available at the top right, is available to free users, and it allows you to purchase a PDF or an image file for your plan. So, this is obviously my red line boundary that could be a sales plan, it could be a, you know, articulating to your friends and family, an area of interest. You hit "Print This Map," and there should be a relatively sequential step-by-step on how you can create a map. I've got this little tool tip that says, "This frame is the saved area," but I need to first create a frame. So, in here, I've hit "Create New Frame," and I'm met with this first page of customization for my map.
The first thing it's asking is what size do you want your print to be? So, for this map, I'd probably go for A4 portrait, unless I'm going for a slightly bigger printout. We do go all the way down to A0, by the way, so do have a little look at those prints. So, I've chosen A4 portrait. You can then choose the scale. You can either auto-scale, which means that I have the flexibility to click and drag and change the size of my print like so, just make that nice and neat. Or, if you're restricted to how the scale is, maybe the planning authority that you're applying to or the RPA is asking for a particular scale, you can actually click "Print at Fixed Scale" and then change that to one to five thousand, for example. So, you can either go auto-scale or not.
I can see a couple of people have raised their hands; we will just be coming to Q&A at the end. There are probably quite a few too many people on the call for us to answer any questions through hand raises at the moment, but do put your question in the Q&A. Once you're happy with the scale and you've made that map central and you've got it to how you want, you can then change the border, which is just the width of this section where you're working in. At the moment, you'll be able to put in a logo and a title and a legend. So, you can either have it as normal, or you could say use less space for the title and the logo and use more space for the actual map using "Narrow." And then you can also change the base map. Worth saying that printing is free; it is available for users. But as part of the licensing, you will be charged depending on what base map you use. So, for example, the Bing imagery that I've currently selected at the moment is priced at three pounds. If I change that to an Ordnance Survey-based map, the price of that has then gone up because it's a royalty that we have to pay to Ordnance Survey. So, depending on what your base map is, we'll change the price that you pay.
Now we'll come on to it when we talk about the professional subscription, but there are routes of either having a discount on your prints or eliminating the print costs if you buy the data upfront. Once you're happy with your map, so let's just say hypothetically I'm looking at going to purchase mine, 22 pounds. When you hit "Customize Print," you won't be charged. So, there's a couple of stages before payment is even considered, but you have, at that point, been given that first quote. So, I've got my Ordnance Survey map. I've got a preview of what it looks like with the watermark on, and here I can start to customize what I want my map to look like.
For example, I want to add a legend. I can hit the legend button and choose where I want that map to sit, the legend to sit, and it automatically has said "Ownership Boundary" with a red line around it. I can edit the legend items by either changing the name, giving it a title, changing the width or the colouring of the style itself. Or I can drag and drop my own default legend as well. So, if you've got a company-wide legend that you want on every map for consistency, you can use that image as well.
Other things that you can do are you can add a header to your map. So, let's just say I want to add a header up here, which is called "Buy Map," and then I also want to write a footer that says "By Dan" at the bottom. Worth saying that these prints, because I've used Ordnance Survey and I've used the Land Registry data, this is an authoritative print that is compliant that you can submit to the authority. And just to point out automatically, there is a scale bar and a North Arrow at the bottom right. So, a couple of you have been in touch about that. So, providing you're using an Ordnance Survey-based map and you've used the Land Registry as I have, you've got a compliant plan that when you print is able to be submitted to the authority.
Other things you can do is you can add a logo. So, if you've got a logo on your desktop, I haven't got one prepped, but you can drag and drop it in, and you can pop your own logo on the map as well or remove our logo and just make it a bit more bespoke. So, you don't have to have our logo on it as well. The final thing to say is that the preview is most of the time accurate as you can, but if in doubt before you purchase the data and therefore commit to the 22 pounds, you can hit "Preview," and what that does is the Land App will just go and render an identical version of the map that you were going to pay for. But ultimately, it's removed the watermarks; there won't be any watermarks on your map when you go to print. And once it's complete, your map will be available to download through this button, which I will just wait for at a moment. Prints can take, depending on how busy the server is, up to a minute. So, just for the name of time, I'm going to exit this map. But in a moment, I'll come back to my print preview because when you go back, it doesn't stop printing; it's still printing in the background. It just means that you can carry on with the job at hand, which at the moment is a webinar with a couple of hundred people listening.
The next workflow is I'm going to basically request from the Rural Payment Agency an ownership boundary using a single business identifier number, and it is going to be for this farm as well. Same as before, I'm going to start by hitting the "New" button at the top left. I'm going to go to "Import Data," but this time I'm going to choose the second option, which is "Import from Rural Payment Agency." Here, I'm met with a slightly different screen, which is requesting a single business identifier number from me, which is a nine-digit numeric string that hopefully either yourself or your clients have. Please note that you do need permission from the SBI owner if it's not yourself before we use it, so just make sure you've got that permission before you do so.
With that number, you can request from the Rural Payment Agency three different layers. So, there's a land cover, a land parcel, and hedges. Land covers is the recommended one because that contains the land parcel information, but it also includes information about the land use type. So, where's the woodland, where's the grassland, where's the cropland? Land parcels are just the authoritative boundary for each individual field parcel, and then hedges are the RPA's Hedgerow data that is available to download as well. I'm just, for this demo, going to download all three so you can see what they look like.
What that does is that, in that split second that happened, the Land App has just verified that the SBI number is correct. If you get through to this stage, it's been verified, and there is data associated with it. But this process, I'm not going to be putting it onto an ownership boundary. Instead, I'm going to be using the Basic Payment Scheme. By moving again, I need to maybe make a note of that, but in agency evaluation, it seems to be filtering out the Basic Payment Scheme. But what we want is if you just change your suggestion sector, there is an option called Basic Payment Scheme in there. You can give your project a name like "BPS My Farm," and when I hit finish, the Land App will send a request to the Repayment Agency and hopefully bring down my land cover, land parcel, and hedge data.
So you can see on my map, I've now got color. Just to show that a bit better, if I go to a blank map for the moment. So, what I've requested from the RPA is those three layers. Those layers can be toggled off on the left-hand side. So, if I toggle off land covers, you can see that the grassland and the woodland blocks have now been removed. If I toggle off land parcels, then I'm just left with these green hedge lines. And obviously, if I turn those off, everything is turned off.
I'm going to spend most of the demo looking at land cover, but we can touch on that if there's particular questions that you've got around the Rural Payment Agency in the Q&A. So, I've now just got one layer turned on when I've got multiple layers turned on, and I click on the map, what happens is that we will select the one that's lower down the list. So, the lower down the list the project is, the more on top it is on the map. Okay, so just really get in the habit when you're using Land App. When you click on a polygon, double-check which project you're editing because it's highlighted yellow on the left-hand side. So, I want to make sure I'm editing land covers, which means I've got all these other layers turned off. I just have one.
When I click on that, you can see that "My Farm Land Covers" is the one that's highlighted. The first thing that you can do with this is you can start looking at the data that the Rural Payment Agency has already provided. Again, I've clicked on a shape, and on the right-hand side, that panel has popped up. But the detail that's contained within this data is a lot more than what was in the ownership data. I've got a description, which is the RPA's land cover descriptor based on last year's basic payment declaration. I've got a code name. I've also got these field IDs, which is the unique ID number that has been registered within the Rural Payment System, and a couple of other attributes as well, all of which can be toggled on as a label hitting that "I" icon.
The first thing that I want to show you is that the list of codes that you can assign these fields has now changed because I'm in the Basic Payment Project rather than the ownership boundary. And if you remember, we changed the code by going up to the top right and hitting the "Change" button. In there, now I've got an accordion list of lots of different Basic Payment Scheme codes. So, again, just to reiterate, if I was trying to do a Countryside Stewardship, I'd use the Countryside Stewardship template, and I would assign Countryside Stewardship codes, same as if I'm trying to do a UK Hab assessment for biodiversity offsetting, etc. So, you can either search through the accordions, so I can click on these different drop-downs and try to find the code I want, or it's a lot easier at the top to search for the code you're looking for. So, in this case, Lucerne is in the ground. The reason I had to assign this one, not the others, is the Rural Repayment Agency doesn't assign a code to any arable land because it was always going to be one year out of date, you know, crops rotate, whereas any more permanent features like permanent grassland and woodland automatically will be assigned by Land App based on the code that's contained within the data set.
As before, you can bulk change codes, so if you do disagree, you can hold shift and select the polygons of interest. So, let's just say hypothetically, I want to hold shift and select these two polygons. I can change both of their codes from "permanent grassland" to "every grassland" by changing the code in that dropdown. A couple of things happen: we update the code and the code name, so you can see these are the BPS codes and the name for that code, but also the styling changes as well.
If I just go back to "permanent grassland," you can see that "TG" turns to "PG," and then the colors and the labels change as well. What doesn't change when you do that, for example, is the area; the area will remain consistent as you change from grassland to barley, etc.
At this point, I just want to say that you're not editing anything on the Rural Payment Agency system. What you are doing is you've downloaded a copy of the data, and you're editing a private map that no one else can see. So, you're not tinkering with anything in the official RPA system; you're merely using it as a template to create your own plans. We can come on to data submissions later. So, we've got within our mapping interface ways that you can interact with the data more than just changing the colour and changing the code.
The first one I want to show you is that you can take a polygon, take an existing shape, and you can split it in half. You can do that by right-clicking on a polygon, choosing the first icon, which is "split." When you do hover over the icon, it does tell you what that code means. For example, I want to split this polygon in half, so I choose the scissor icon. My cursor now turned into a blue dot. I can then drop the dot firstly outside of the polygon to kind of start the cut. Then when I've clicked once with my left mouse click, the mouse is no longer just a single dot; it's a line where I've clicked, and the dot's attached to it.
I need to drag that all the way through, so I'm now basically going to double-click when I'm happy with where that line is. So, I'm happy there, double-click, and what's happened is now that one Lucerne field has been clipped into two. So, you can see that that one polygon is now two separate polygons. In that process, what hasn't happened is the code hasn't changed; they're both still Lucerne. But what has happened is the area has been adjusted; you've cut a polygon into half; you've now got two parts. Land App automatically calculates the area on your behalf. So, just to illustrate that with the area turned on, this field is 6.57. I right-click and choose split, split it in half; 6.57 turns into those two numbers, 3.8 and 2.7.
By geospatially mapping, hopefully you're starting to understand and realize that actually, then you can get a really accurate area, providing what you've done on the map is correct. And as the data is underpinned by the Rural Payment Agency, it is an authoritative data set. As earlier, I'm just going to click the back button because I don't want two parts of my Lucerne field; I just want two.
I now can assign half of my field a different code. So, actually, maybe just hypothetically, this north section is Lucerne, and the bottom section is more of a temporary grass field. I can update the polygons, but fundamentally, I have not changed the field ID or any other metadata, so they're still relevant to field 2286, but they've now got two separate codes.
I'm now just going to slowly bring up the cadence about the different geometry tools and different ways that I can change the shape of this field. Another one that's really useful is a buffer. So, you can buffer in two different ways, really. You can either buffer the entire perimeter of a field. So, say, you've got a 6-meter fallow or a footpath that runs around the outside, and you can do that by hitting this buffer tool at the top. It's a little square with a square around the outside. You hit that, and what that's done is it will then center your polygon of interest. Sometimes, if you've accidentally zoomed the other way, just make sure you're looking at the polygon of interest, and there's a little halo around the outside.
You can then choose which side you want to buffer. So, we've got side one, which is the external edge. If I just zoom in, I've chosen side one, and that's putting a 6-meter buffer around the outside, which might be useful if you're maybe buffering a pond, so you've selected the pond and adding a buffer. But what I do want is actually not side one; I want side two. You can see I've turned side two on; it's now the interior edge. I can then dictate how big I want that buffer, and you can be quite specific, 12.56 meters, for example. Then there are a couple of other toggles that you can use. "Rounded Corners" is one that I use regularly. There's a little edge on this buffer strip here that's probably not how the tractor is going to drive, for example. If you hit the toggle "Rounded Corners," hopefully, you can see that that edge is now slightly more natural, slightly smoother.
The other button, which is "subtract," will minus the area of the margin from my whole field. So, at the moment, this field is 6.57. If I toggle on "subtract" and hit OK, that 6.57 will reduce by the area of the margin, so you can see that 6.57 has now gone to 5.33. That buffer is now its own polygon with its own codes and its own area, etc., which can be assigned. So, the area that's over here, I can assign that to, say, a fallow code. Again, don't worry too much about the basic payment codes I'm using; I'm really just trying to justify them and demonstrate the different drawing tools rather than the basic payment codes itself.
That's drawing a buffer around the entire field. However, we know that most buffers don't go all the way around the field, and some of them change widths at different times. So, you can actually draw a buffer down a specific edge, and the way you do that is twofold. You first need to draw a line, a line that marks out where you want that buffer to go, and then, secondly, you add a buffer to that line. During this first thing you need to do is select the polygon of interest.
So, let's just say hypothetically I want to draw a buffer down the eastern edge of this barley field I've got here. I can click on the polygon, and then hit "draw" at the top left. This is the first time we've come into this section, and at the moment, you're met with the different shapes of which Land App allows you to draw depending on what you're trying to draw. Whether it's the geometry of that thing, you choose a different shape. But for now, what I want is this first option, which is the line.
By choosing "line," exactly the same way as I split, my mouse is now got a blue dot that follows me. But what it will try to do is, by default, it will magnetize to the boundary of the field. You can see my cursor is getting attracted to the edge of the field, which I'll show you how to turn off in a moment. But for the process that I'm showing, it is exactly what I want. So, I've clicked once there, which, again, just like the split tool, has turned my cursor into a line. But now, as I go near the boundary, you can see that the buffer is now trying to snap to the line of that polygon. So, I don't need to actually try and draw the field parcel as it is. I can use the Rural Payment Agency's data or whatever data I've got at the time to define the shape of that feature. For example, I can go all the way down to this corner and maybe even round this corner, and you can see that it's magnetizing. Once you're happy with where it is, and that blue line reflects where you want the buffer, you can double click, and what that does is that is now dropped a line, which is quite faint red, but you can then hit "finish" at the top left.
You can see that I've only clicked three times, but you can see I've got quite a complex buffer that's followed identically to the Rural Payment Agency's shape. The next step is then I can add a buffer to that line. While the line is highlighted, I can go back into that buffer tool, choose "side one" or "side two." Now, there is logic behind this; "side one" is the left, and "side two" is the right, but I've drawn upside down, so technically, I need "side two." Just use trial and error in that; there's no lie to you. Just test one, make sure it works, and then if it doesn't, choose the other side. Again, I've added "side two," chosen my 12-meter buffer; you can see it's added that red line. But just for demonstration purposes, I am going to round the corners, but I'm not going to hit "subtract."
What I've now done is I've now got a buffer, which I can assign a code. Again, let's just go for "fallow." But what's happening at the moment is I have got overlap; my fallow plot is currently sat on top of my barley field. The way that you can see that is obviously, I got this orange line. If I click on the barley, the orange line is covered over; I can no longer see or click on my fallow plot. It's just to drill into that point a little bit; if that happens, that's when you can actually get some errors in your mapping. So, we always try as much as possible, unless there's some reasons not to, try to keep your maps two-dimensional. Try to avoid any overlap between what you're drawing and what you're trying to draw, for example. So, if you're putting a pond in the middle of a field, make sure you've subtracted that pond from the grassland. The easiest way to do it is first just click on a bit of the map that's outside of a polygon. So, if I'm trying to click over here, I'm constantly going to be clicking on the barley field. Instead, I'm just going to click on this dual carriage area that's here. I can now select the fallow plot.
The fallow is on top of that map, on top of that barley field, sorry, which then means that I can go into this buffer tool and choose "subtract." If you watch the area of this field (13.97), hit "subtract," it's now 13.44. Those features are now flush with each other, there's no overlap. Just to demonstrate that one more time, you may have a feature like I mentioned, a pond that's floating in the field, and this is where you can get creative.
I'll show two different examples in quick succession. The first one, let's just say I've got a muck heap. I'm putting a muck heap in the top of my field. I'm going to use a rectangle because it's mostly in the shape of a rectangle. I can then draw a rectangle which may look like this, like so, and assign it to "muck heap." With rectangles, you can actually be quite specific. It could be exactly 60 meters by 22 meters, and you can change that like so. You can also move that shape if you're not happy with it by toggling on this "move" feature at the top right. So, I can choose that and I can move my feature where I want, and I can also rotate that feature as well. So, you've got a bit of flexibility, particularly before you've subtracted it or where that hypothetical muck heap is going.
Once you're happy with it, you can obviously then do the stages that we just did with the buffer. Firstly, go into the buffer tool and hit "subtract," which then will hole punch that, so to speak, that shape through my grass field, and then you can assign that current rectangle to a code, which I think this heap is, for example. There we are, I've taken that area out of my grass or my barley field, and I've assigned it to a heap.
Just to say that one step further, you can draw other shapes, and actually, this is a pro tip. One of the biggest areas I see, actually just as an aside, is people accidentally leaving this move button on. If you accidentally start moving shapes like this, this is where data can get inaccurate. So, I'm just going to go back and back like so. Just make sure you re-toggle on this one, the "modify/adjust feature" button here, because then you can't drag features out the way. Just keep an eye on what's highlighted yellow throughout the process because that's the setting that's switched on at the moment.
Just to quickly show you, you can draw quite bespoke features. So, if I choose "area," I wanted to draw a pond in this corner, I can hold shift and I can kind of draw a swirly shape as well like that. There we go, I've got a pond that's in a slightly more natural feeling as well. Okay, again, assign the code, hit "subtract," and I've got a pond of a certain area that's minus from my grass field.
Other tools that are going to be useful: So, I drew one heap, but let's just say hypothetically, and this could be a glass house or it could be a building, I want to use the exact same shape of that heap to put one next to it. You can click on the shape and at the top, there's this button called "duplicate." You hit that, and now what you can see is I've now got two shapes, one exactly the same as the other. You can move that shape around if you want to place it somewhere else. The area is consistent; it's kept it at the same size. If you wanted to do something like rotate it, it will then rotate the shape around its centroid, the centre point, and you can see it updates the area as well.
So that's kind of how you can draw new features based on existing features. So, that's just a quick example of the buffer and the modify tools. Again, I think we will move on and do a quick poll before we carry on with the demo just to get an understanding of if people have used this tool or maybe used it for other purposes that maybe you haven't come across.
It doesn't look like a lot happened, but what's actually happened is Land App has given you an identical shape on top of that heap. So, I need to move the feature, and you can see that I can move one heap, and I've now got two heaps. So, you can kind of clone features by hitting that "duplicate" button and moving them across.
The other thing to say is that you can move features from one plan to another. Actually, before I do that, I'm just going to subtract these, just because then they're consistent. What you can do is you can copy shapes between plans. So, if you remember earlier, I had done this ownership boundary. If, on that ownership boundary, you want those heaps or that pond to be showing on this plan, all you need to do is turn on the basic payment, select the feature of interest, so let's just say hypothetically I want this pond to be on my ownership boundary. You can then right-click on that pond, choose "copy to plan," and then bring it over to the ownership boundary, copy the features.
Okay, just to see it, remember it's highlighting the ownership boundary, but that's behind my existing basic payment. Just remember to turn that land cover layer off, and you can see now that I've got that exact shape in the location I drew on my ownership boundary that I can, you know, style and give it a colour I say. So, you can both duplicate and copy between plans.
Okay, and there's my maps of buildings. So, that's the end of that demo. That's completing a slightly more detailed plan, basic payment, but that will work, that process will work for Countryside Stewardship and habitat mapping as well. The other functions I want to show are slightly more detailed uses for the Land App.
The first one I want to show is the ability to upload georeferenced photos. So, some of you might be walking around your farm taking photos on your phone, or you've got historic photos that you want to upload onto the Land App. What you can do is you can open up the photos in your desktop. So, hopefully, you can see my georeferenced folder. You can either upload one at a time, or again, you can hold shift and select multiple. You can then basically drag those photos onto your map like this. So, I've got three photos and hit "drop," and then the Land App has now loaded those photos.
I can hit "finish," and then the final thing you need to do is you need to just toggle your photo layer on by hitting this toggle at the bottom. So, if I just change those layers, at the moment, you can see that I've got three camera icons showing three photos I took on my smartphone of what's happening on the ground. There's... I think this photo was taken a couple of years ago, but you can see then exactly where the photo was taken based on this data contained within.
Worth noting that we will be touching on the mobile app in probably 20 minutes or so, maybe a bit less. So, the mobile app will help you do that a lot quicker. But just to say, if you've got any historic photos, you can upload them by dragging and dropping.
The other thing to say is that we've got the ability to add folders. So, at the bottom right, especially as you're creating more plans, you can actually start to organize this left-hand panel by hitting that little plus icon. Let's just say "2022 claims" is a folder, that then creates a separate folder of which I can click and drag different plans into. So, I can drag my VPS claims, for example, into my map like so, and I can create another folder called "Boundaries" like so, and I can drag ownership boundaries into there. Okay, you can then open and close the folders like so. So, I can click on the boundaries and click on the claims folders and therefore see what's contained within it, but that just helps organize and keep things nice and tidy.
The other benefit of doing that as well is you can actually bulk action. So, you can, for example, show all layers within your claims folder, so it turns them all on. And you can also hide, lock, unlock, delete, rename, etc., on mass. Using folders not only helps keep organized and actually makes the performance of the Land App slightly better, it also keeps things nice and tidy as well.
Once you've done your mapping, then the benefit of doing it in a digital space, rather than doing it on pen and paper, is that you can actually run reports on that data. So, you can see I've got hectarage and I've got field parcel numbers, etc., and so what I think one of the most powerful use cases is once you've done your plan, whatever your plan might be, you can run different reports on that data. The way you do that is at the top right, we've got this little icon called "reports." If you click on that, you are met with a little bit of guidance, which I will hopefully talk you through of how you use the reports function.
I'm going to close that for now and try and tell you myself. But you first need to hit this green button called "add plan" and then choose which of your plans that you want to run a report on. So, just for the demo, I'm going to start with my land covers basic payment. Click "done." I'm then met with this line of data. I can click on that, and it's now giving me a breakdown of my map in terms of hectarage and total number of features.
In this demo, I've done two different fields that are arable land barley, which total 15.70 hectares, which is 46.47% of my total area if it was a line. So, there was a couple of lines I drew. I think I've got an unassigned line where I did that buffer strip. It was 40.451 meters. Okay, so this is broken down by categories by the Basic Payment Scheme. And again, if you're doing another plan like an estate plan, the categories will be different.
You can download this, so this is available for free to download. Remember, I'm still in the free product at the moment. You can hit the download button. It then just exports an Excel file to your computer. You can also click this little table button, and there is a breakdown of your plan by field parcel number. So, rather than aggregating them by code, each of your parcel and its component parts is broken down by a row, which is part of your Basic Payment application. You can download this to Excel, so you can hit the download button at the top right, and that again downloads this, but obviously now it's not an aggregation; it's the row by row.
As a note, we are moving that behind our subscription at the first of April, so at the moment, it's for free until the first of April. But that download button will be moving as of the 1st of April. To get out of this map, you need to hit the "back to reports" button, and then you can hit "back to map" at the top right, and that is then a quick way of downloading and exporting your plan data.
We've done a print export, and I'm just going to quickly show you now where you can access that print. So, I think if I go in here, there is a little icon at the top right, again might be behind my head, and go into prints. Hopefully, I've done this right, I know because it was maybe other demo, apologies. Right, let me go back. I will go back into prints and see if it's there, but I think maybe previews don't save, it's only if you purchase the data. That's good learning for me, every day is a school day.
So, your printing, you'll be able to access if you paid for the prints through that prints template, and that is stored for 12 months. So, if you come back in six months and you want to reprint a map or re-download a map, you can through that prints function. The other ways that you can share and collaborate on the data, and something that I think has been critical to our uptake, is that we're cloud-based, which means that you can do live collaboration between your friends and neighbours on your map, and that is accessed through this "sharing settings" at the top right.
You can click this button, and here, just like you can in something like Google Sheets, you can add collaborators into your map. So, I can add my work email address, for example, dan@thelandapp.com, and I can either add myself in this case as a read-only, which means that I'll be able to come in, not be able to edit the data, but I will be able to turn on layers and interact with the data. I can invite as an editor, which means I can come in and edit things, which includes delete, add, change, and then there's this third level of permission, which is publisher, which is only relevant for professional subscribers. So, if you're working with your agent, for example, who's on the professional, inviting them as a publisher gives them permission to start aggregating your data with the rest of their client base.
Let's just say I'm going to add Dan at the Land App as a read-only. I've now got two different collaborators. I can add as many collaborators as I want, so I can add my friends, my neighbours, advisors, etc., as either read-only, or you can change the permissions to editor. If you no longer want to share that data, it's just the case of coming, clicking the X, and they're no longer can access your map. It's hyperdynamic, hyperlive, which hopefully means we can start moving away from sharing PDFs over email and start moving towards live collaboration where we can get a lot more dynamic planning happening, especially powerful during COVID, for example.
So that's sharing your map. And then the final way to export and share your data is that this is geospatial data that you own and as per our terms of reference. So, even our free users can come and export that data if they wish.
So, I've gone into land covers, I've clicked the three dots next to land covers, and there is this button called "export." I can then take that file either as a GeoJSON, a KML (for Google Earth), shapefile (for anyone on the Esri ecosystem), or DXF (for any architects using CAD software). But you can then again choose your file type, hit "export," and just like the reports, it downloads to your computer.
Okay, so we've just got one more thing to show within this mapping interface. As part of the free product, we've got at the bottom right, we've got Live Support. So, at the bottom right, there's a little icon that you can click on. It gives you guidance, so you can search for help. Maybe after this, you're like, "Oh, Dan showed us how to do a buffer, but I can't remember exactly how I did it." You can search for help, and there's different guidance exactly how to do that particular thing. For example, how to draw a partial buffer. And if you're completely stuck, there's a couple of other ways that you can look for help.
We've got a growing YouTube channel of which this recording will go up on, which you can access through clicking that link. Or we do have live chat as well that you can drop us a message and say hello. Ah, there we are. Thank you, Sam, for dropping us some extra messages. Okay, the other way you can access help and guidance is there is a "Help and Guidance" button at the top right as well. So, there's a little question mark that does open up a new tab within your web browser where you can search for articles and start looking at different things.
Okay, so we are just on the hour mark. We've got half an hour left. I'm going to spend 10 minutes now explaining a bit more about the professional subscription, how the professional subscription can help you improve your workflows, and then we're going to spend 20 minutes going through the Q&A. And I can see there are quite a few coming through. If you've got any more, please do pop those in the Q&A function.
So, now I've magically teleported to a professional subscription. As a note, actually before I do that, just one step, if you are interested in joining a professional subscription, you can access it by clicking the little person icon at the top right, and there's a button called "upgrade." You follow the steps within that, and it can get you onboarded to our professional subscription. It starts at £15 a month, but the more users you add, the cheaper it gets. And for full pricing, do check our website.
Okay, so now I'm on the professional map. I've logged in on my professional account. In here, I've got a slightly different view from the account that I was just using, which was my free personal account. I'm now on my work one. The first thing to say is that you can see here in this team tags, I have got a list of tags for which I can assign to my maps. So, as my team grows, and you can see that there are lots of different maps, I can basically add a tag to maps that allow me to filter the data and allow the data to be filtered for my team. So, as my team grows, I may want them to see everything, or I may want them to only see certain things, and we call that team management, and that can be managed and maintained in what is an organization page.
In here, there's different ways of adding tags for your different team members. You know, we've got some organizations that are now over 500 users. You need to be quite disciplined in who can see what, not overloading your users, and a really nice way of doing that. The other benefits that we've got are within a map; you have access to a couple of other data layers.
I'm hoping, going to extend... which I know I got... there we are. So, I'm back in the same place. First thing to say is that I, as an Ordnance Survey partner and eligible for the Ordnance Survey data hub, have access to Ordnance Survey data through the API, and we can provide guidance on that. But what that means is if you're eligible, you can link your Ordnance Survey account to your Land App account, which eliminates the need for credits. So, whether you're an advisory body giving third-party advice, whether you're a public sector body like a council, whether you're a government agency like Natural England or RPA, we can wire in the Ordnance Survey data through the Professional Network to give you access to that base map without hitting that paywall.
Other data layers that you have access to, one that's quite interesting, and I think in Blue Peter fashion, I'm just going to zoom over to this ownership. Here's one I prepared earlier. When you toggle on the ownership layer, sorry, like I did earlier with Freehold, professional users can find out who owns those polygons, providing that they are a corporate ownership. So, I've now clicked on this block, and you can see that I've now got a button that's green called "view owner." I can then get the ownership details of that polygon. So, if I am, for example, doing some site finding or wanting to engage with my neighbours or trying to understand who owns the parcel of land, it's a really nice way of getting some information and maybe writing them a letter. In this case, it's owned by Seven Trend Water Foreign.
The other thing that you can do, which is quite handy with the professional subscription, is you can run data layer reports. So, earlier, I've just chosen, again, a random block of lands and random polygons. I was toggling on and off different data layers, so I was toggling on, am I in a designation? Do I have nature reserves? Am I in a triple SI? Scheduled Monument, etc., etc. You can toggle on all these layers, but it can get quite overwhelming to understand are you in a priority zone or are you not? So, our professional users can run their boundary, which is this blue and red line boundary, through what we call a data layer report. That's accessed through the reports page again at the top right of your screen, but it's that second button called Data layers that is not accessible to free users, where you can actually create a report based on your boundary.
So, I'm basically choosing my reference area, which is that ownership boundary. I then want the Land App to run a report based on all the access layers or the administrative, all the geologies, habitat, etc., and then maybe for historic, I only want them to look at two or three of them. So, you can choose which layers you want them to check. Once you've got that list sorted, so I'm basically asking the Land App, do I intersect or do I not intersect 43 different data layers? I can then run this as a demo report like so and hit done. What the Land App does is it just then puts your boundary file through a process. It just kind of scrapes through our entire database, and it'll take 20 to 40 seconds, and it will return for me whether I do intersect that data layer and if so, what other information it can give me as well.
So there we are, it's generating the report, and I've now got a report for my boundary. Total hectares is 361 hectares. I do have public rights of way. I've got 23 different sections of public right-of-way, which is 7319 meters. Which planning authority I'm in, which parish I'm in, etc., etc. So, if you are doing an EIA assessment or looking into a piece of land value or you're just curious, this report is a really powerful way of just choosing a polygon or many polygons of land, running it through the report, and getting a breakdown of all those different features that you intersect. Also, sometimes just as useful when you don't intersect them as well. So, for example, all these designations I'm not within, which is also an important bit of information.
As per the others, it can be downloaded to an Excel file by hitting that download button, and it then downloads to your computer.
Right, I've got five minutes just to finalize a couple of things. I've mentioned printing, so just as a note, printing is 20% cheaper for our professional subscribers. So, you still have to pay a license fee to the Ordnance Survey, but you can get 20% off. One thing I wanted to show is particularly beneficial if you're working with clients whose Single Business Identifier number is huge. So, whether, you know, Wildlife Trust, for example, that's got many different sites or a bigger estate that's got different blocks, our professional subscribers can actually request as part of the subscription a proportion of their holding area.
And they access this through the "New" button and "Buy Data." There's this button called "RPA Import Large Holding," and what you can do is follow the steps by either choosing an area of interest, so we had a case earlier where someone has a land registry parcel they want to just know what SBI data is contained within that parcel. You can choose it from there or you can create a frame, and just for the demonstration purposes, I want to download from the RPA just the SPI data that fits within that boundary.
Cutting the features just means, do I want the square to be the definitive edge? Paste your SBI number in, hit "demo," and "land covers," and what that does is it just sends a request to the RPA again, but the Land App will only serve the areas that are fully within your boundary. So, hopefully, here we are, if I go in there and zoom to extent, I've now got just the polygon, just the areas of my SBI number that fall within that square I drew.
So, obviously, if you think about a larger scale, it's just a way of you chunking up that SBI number.