As the National Mapping Agency of Great Britain, the Ordnance Survey" (0S) is driven by a need to reduce costs and commercialize operations, and as such has been investigating photogrammetric methods to improve existing products,
streamline existing production, and increase the current portfolio of products. Over the last 18 months, the 0S has been involved in a major research project to tackle these issues through an evaluation of the forthcoming commercial U.S. high spatial resolution satellite sensors which are offering 1-m panchromatic and 4-m multispectral spatial resolutions. Work has focused on improving the existing National Height Dataset (NHD), reducing the cost of photogrammetric
survey, automatic topographic feature change detection, production of DM; three-dimensional (30) urban models, and land-use classification. Results from the project using simulated imagery indicate that it would have potential within the 0S in all areas evaluated. The work now needs to be followed up when real high spatial resolution satellite imagery becomes commercially available.