Northern Ireland Mapping Agreement (NIMA)

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What is the Northern Ireland Mapping Agreement?

The Northern Ireland Mapping Agreement (NIMA) is the mechanism between LPS and the nine NICS Departments, which includes the Departments themselves, their Executive Agencies, Non Departmental Public Bodies, Arms Length Bodies and North-South Implementation Bodies. NIMA also includes Northern Ireland’s Local Councils (via a separate agreement) (all collectively known as “NIMA Participants”).

The NIMA was approved at a meeting of the Permanent Secretaries Group held in October 2016 and was designed to assist with the improvement of Government Services to the people of Northern Ireland by:

• providing the official definitive spatial datasets (IP) to all NIMA Particpants that are central in decision making processes delivering each Particpant’s Public Task(s)
• enabling NIMA Participants to share information derived from the OSNI/LPS datasets with all other NIMA participants
• providing permission to reproduce the IP within the work needed to deliver each Participants’ public task(s)
• enabling the sharing of the IP with sub-licensees (through the appropriate form). This helps Participants in keeping their costs to a minimum as 3rd party expertise will not include the charges for licensing the same OSNI/LPS IP (see terms and conditions)
• providing guidance and advice on how to get the most out of the IP with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) via LPS NIMA Support team
• provide guidance and advice on Copyright and IPR issues (including sub-licensing, acknowledgement statements and publishing via LPS IPR team

What is covered by the Northern Ireland Mapping Agreement?

The Northern Ireland Mapping Agreement provides access to and use of key official and definitive spatial datasets (such as those created by Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland) to public sector organisaions.

A detailed description of the data covered by NIMA can be found on our products page.

Who is covered by the Northern Ireland Mapping Agreement?

The Northern Ireland Mapping Agreement (NIMA) includes the following organisations:

• NICS Departments
• Executive Agencies
• Non Departmental Public Bodies (NDPB's)
• Arms Length Bodies (ALB's)
• North-South Implementation Bodies
• Local Councils (via a separate agreement)

A full list of all NIMA participants can be found here.

If you are unsure if your organisation is a NIMA participant, email us for advice.