A collection of aerial photographs providing national coverage supplied to BGS by Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS). The aerial photos bought by BGS were taken during a two year period from 1988-89 and were bought by BGS for individual mapping projects. The photos are a copy of the originals held by the RCAHMS. Since 1976, RCAHMS has undertaken an annual programme of aerial survey, recording archaeological sites, monuments and buildings throughout Scotland. All RCAHMS data is crown copyright. The photos are for internal BGS use but external users are welcome to view them at BGS, an appointment must be made first. An index is provided on the Geoscience Data Index (GDI).

Index to various collections of Aerial Photographs purchased or obtained by BGS and its precursors as part of its surveying activities. The index was set up in 2000 and mainly covers Great Britain. The level of spatial detail depends on the flight plans provided, but most are referenced at least to OS quarter sheet level.

The database contains scanned photographs (at 1016dpi) of the UK and various locations around the world. Some are single band (black&white) others are 3 band colour. The images are stored in various formats on various types of magnetic media: .COT raw scans can only be used on the Intergraph ImageStation; .JPG (Intergraph format); .TIF. Processed scans may also be saved as stereomodels (with project data) and as orthophotographs. Mono coverage for most of the UK and we are constantly acquiring stereo data. Data is updated when unscanned areas are required by projects.