Ordnance Survey (OS) has signed up to support the Locus Charter to promote the responsible use of location data worldwide.
The national mapping agency has become the latest organisation to join the charter, which was launched earlier this year as a set of common guiding principles to help practitioners and decision makers use location data for good.
The Locus Charter is spearheaded by EthicalGEO and Benchmark Initiative and applies to the use of location data across all sectors including public, private, educational and not-for-profit.
OS’s chief geospatial officer, David Henderson, said: “As a world leader in the development and application of trusted location data, it is important for OS to remain at the forefront of the growing international discussion around location data ethics and play our part. Our participation in the Locus Charter community allows us to do this.”
“Joining the Locus Charter community reinforces our commitment to the work OS and Geovation have proudly pioneered during the past two years through the Benchmark Initiative on location data ethics.”
The charter consists of 10 principles developed through a series of international workshops and which are intended to form the basis for further collaboration. They include doing no harm to people or the environment and addressing any possibility of bias in how data is collected and used.
