Esri provides traditional raster basemaps that can be utilised through ArcGIS Online and other apps to create maps and apps. These multi-scale basemaps are delivered as pre-rendered image tiles to optimize performance. The raster basemaps have proven to be very useful and popular, with several billion tiles served each month, but they have some limitations such as being costly to create and not customizable. To provide additional options for users, Esri also introduced a set of vector basemaps. These basemaps are delivered as vector tiles that are rendered client-side based on a style file that is delivered with the vector tiles. Users are able to customize the look and feel of the vector basemaps by creating custom styles that are used to render the vector tiles. With advances in GIS technology and the shift from ArcMap to ArcGIS Pro, Esri vector basemaps have now become the primary basemaps used by ArcGIS. This blog discusses some of the motivations behind customers migrating to vector tile basemap that can help produce more successful outcomes in the customer journey.

Why Migrate To Vector Basemaps?

Cost Reduction: due to the reduced amount of processing time required to produce our vector basemaps the cost is greatly reduced compared to raster basemaps, this is especially significant for processing national caches of the whole of Great Britain. Vector basemaps are also much smaller in size therefore have a low credit cost in ArcGIS Online.

Performance: Our vector basemaps are much smaller in size and faster to load bringing a huge boost in performance. This is particularly noticeable when using a national cache with an extent of the whole of Great Britain. This is also important for users accessing maps on mobile devices or in areas with slower internet connections. If your data is also in British National Grid you will see an increased level of performance compared to other WGS 1984 basemaps. Vector tile layers have the best performance on machines with newer hardware, and they can be displayed in the current versions of most desktop browsers.

Scalability: Our vector basemaps are highly scalable, meaning that they can be zoomed in to a scale of 1:17 without losing quality or detail. This makes them ideal for use on a range of devices with different screen sizes, from smartphones to large monitors.

Editable:  Our vector basemaps give the ability to create your own cartographic styles and to customise the map styles and content of your maps. This also makes it easier to create maps that are tailored to a particular use case or organisation branding. To design your own custom styles you can use the Vector Tile Style Editor . You can also edit the JSON directly to make changes. Editing the JSON directly requires knowledge of JSON syntax and conventions. Please view the documentation Editing JSON | Vector Tile Style Editor (arcgis.com)

Interactivity: Vector basemaps allow for more interactivity in maps, such as hover effects, pop-ups, and clickable features. This can enhance the user experience and make maps more engaging.

Frequent updates: Due to lower processing costs and time it easy for us to update your vector tile cache using replace tile layer. We can replace a tile layer in your ArcGIS Online portal with a new vector tile layer. When we replace the layer it is instant and service URL and item ID do not change so you don’t need to worry about changing the URL for your services after they have been updated.

Coordinate Systems: Vector basemaps can be projected into various coordinate systems, using desktop applications such as ArcGIS Pro, without distortion of labels and other symbols. Overall our vector basemaps offer a more efficient, customizable, and interactive way to display geographic data compared to the traditional raster basemaps.

What Vector Basemaps do Esri UK offer?

Maps+ is Esri UK’s data-as-a-service offering, created using best available data sources, and made available to purchase via the Esri Marketplace online.  An overview and further documentation for Maps+ is available to access here. The collection includes high-performance online vector base maps such as the most detailed building and street level datasets for Great Britain – the GB Premium Basemap which includes the OS MasterMap® Topography Layer and OS VectorMap® Local combined data and provides you with a cartographically styled vector basemap for use at all scales. Available as a vector cache, you can use one of our styles, or create your own using the Vector Tile Style Editor. Styles available are dark grey, light grey, cartographic, background, outdoors and a range of accessible styles.

Esri UK also provides bespoke offerings of the vector base maps such as the standard OS MasterMap® Topography Layer basemap, available in British National Grid, Irish National Grid and Web Mercator coordinate systems and at national or bespoke extents.  It is available in our Esri UK ‘Cartographic’ style and our Esri UK ‘Greyscale’ style. With Consultancy further bespoke styles can be applied to the vector basemaps. Some of these styles closely resemble the traditional raster basemap such as the Esri UK ‘Cartographic’ style which showcases classic OS cartography with traditional and consistent colours which people are familiar with and make the geography easy to understand and read. Due to the full colour representation the data you overlay may get lost in the detail of the basemap, however it could also add an extra level of geographical context to certain datasets. The Esri UK ‘Greyscale’ style is a great background basemap due to its muted colour allowing all attention to be drawn to your data rather than the basemap.

How are Vector Basemaps delivered?

Esri UK’s Maps+ offering of data-as-a-service online vector basemaps are available to purchase via the Esri Marketplace online.

Esri UK can also deliver online bespoke vector tile basemaps directly into Organisations ArcGIS Online accounts for consuming in online maps and apps and add into ArcGIS Pro projects. We also provide offline vector tile basemaps for download from our SharePoint site and for adding directly into ArcGIS Pro project.

We can update online bespoke vector tile basemap with new data instantly in ArcGIS Online accounts without any outage or change in service URL or item ID. For offline deliveries we can provide an updated offline vector tile basemap for download from our Sharepoint site.