pangeo: europe’s geo hazards online - gis professional · 2019-02-01 · efﬁcient feature &...

issue 58 : June 2014

PanGeo: Europe’s geo hazards online

. . . joining the geography jigsaw

GeoPlace Awards: winners and improvers

Multi agency approach for Welsh blue lights

AGI Scotland: catching them young!

LiDAR and GIS ease climate change in the Pacific

Big Data and Location: the new frontier?

Polygon prices: Ordnance Survey in the dock

Cassini recreates OS historical mapping

Technology speeds land reform in the East

and much more withNews | People | Products & Services | GiSPro’s columnists

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read on. . .

Front cover: European city geohazards. AGround Stability Layer for the city of Rome,

Italy, overlain on Landsat data. ©PanGeo andISPRA. To read more about this fascinating

project turn to page 10.

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p.05 Editorialp.06 News & Peoplep.33 GiSPro Products & Services

p.34 GIS Calendar p.35 GiSPro Classifiedp.35 GiSPro Appointments

> GISPro’s STANDFASTS

> GISPro’s COLUMNS

p.08 AGI Column – your attention please. . .

p.09 Adena Schutzberg – wake up and read the small print

to subscribe to GiSPro, go towww.pvpubs.com/GISProfessional/Home

contentsIssue No 58 June 2014

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Enabling access to geohazardsThe PanGeo project is providing access to geohazard information forcities across Europe. Claire Roberts reports.

Big Data and Location: a new frontier?Andy Coote reports on some of the insights and wisdom from the experts atthe recent Strata 14 Conference in San Francisco.

The price of polygonsFollowing an OPSI report into variable pricing between OSGB andLand Registry, GiSPro asks: is it time to bang some heads together?

GeoPlace Awards: winners and improversRights of Way, BOATS and how coordinated address databases are helpingcatch fraudsters. It was all on show at the GeoPlace Annual Awards day.

MAIT and faster response times for WalesA pilot project in the principality could lead to massive savings amongstBritain’s emergency responders, argues Tony Bracey.

Case study: good address managementBy linking electoral registration, benefits and other local authoritysystems, substantial savings are possible.

AGI Scotland goes to schoolAGI Scotland and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society haveteamed up to show 20 school students just what geo is all about.

Cassini’s historical editionsBrian Quinn of publishers Cassini explains the painstaking processbehind the creation of their historical Ordnance Survey map series.

Land reform in the former Eastern BlocRapid change is possible in land ownership and registration usingmodern technology, explain Gavin Adlington and Rumyana Tonchovska.

GIS and LiDAR track Pacific Islands climate changeWhile we in Britain experience increased flooding events, many low-lyingPacific island communities face obliteration, explains Nathan Eaton.

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Big data, polygons, land registration and geohazardsIn articles and in the news columns we have an eclectic mix of topics and geography this month – fromland reform to lidar, from pricing and licensing to centralised address maintenance and from Wales tothe south Pacific via eastern Europe. Throw in crowd sourcing and Big Data and I think we have some-thing for everyone.

Last month we commented on the Land Registry being rushed towards the private sector and its simul-taneous attempts to offer wider services to local authorities. This month it seems that Ordnance Surveyis following suit and, although there are no (public) consultations on privatisation, it has now set upa GeoIntelligence Team to ‘deliver bespoke solutions and consulting services built around locationdata’. No prizes for guessing where the data will come from! At the same time there is a move tocentralise maintenance of the national address gazetteer by developing in-house software at GeoPlace– part owned by Ordnance Survey. This would presumably replace gazetteer maintenance softwareprovided by several small GIS companies that have supported local authorities for many years. Thelogic for a centralised on-line service is compelling though the monopolistic nature of such venturescould easily lead to an over-engineered solution with potential for chaos if it breaks down!

The most important OS product for many users is OS MasterMap and particularly the TopographyLayer. Land Registry use this layer for producing Title Plans that are the basis of land registration inEngland and Wales and for the Index Map that shows the relative positions of all Titles. Exactly howmuch of OS MasterMap is used by the Land Registry is now the main issue in a dispute over the licens-ing and pricing of the Index Map data to a third party eager to exploit it commercially. We summarisethe Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) report and we suspect that the final outcome will haveimplications far beyond property boundaries. One hopes that they will sort this out before either orboth move to the private sector. ‘Read all abaa. . .t it!’ as they say on page 15.

Starting more or less from scratch, and with not even a Domesday Book to go on, the newly estab-lished land registration systems in the ex-socialist countries of eastern Europe are enthusiasticallydescribed by Gavin Adlington from the World Bank and Rumyana Tonchovska from the UN Foodand Agriculture Organisation. Some of these are already much larger than our own LR and at least twoof them – in Russia and Ukraine – may now be tested in unforeseen ways. However, if you prefer thebalmier climes of the South Pacific, read on. We have an article on how lidar systems are helping islandnations to come to terms with rising sea levels (see page 31).

Meanwhile, Andy Coote reports on Big Data in the context of GI and Adena Schutzberg suggeststhat we need to get used to the idea of ‘our’ data being swept into crowd-sourced products that ben-efit us all. While Tony Bracey writes on the award winning Welsh Multi Agency Information Transfer(MAIT) – a potentially life-saving system that depends on building trust between data providers in localauthorities and data users in the emergency services. This reduces duplication and should lead toimproved data quality for everyone. Local authorities have also contributed to, and benefited from, thesatellite based geo-hazard mapping PanGeo, as described by Claire Roberts at NPA (see page 10 andour eye-catching front cover).

I am afraid Eurofile is missing again from this issue – not a reflection on recent election results but atleast partly due to your editor having been hospitalised in Majorca and not being able to type very faston a tablet! Next time I might even come up with one of my Oz files; doctors permitting I will be downunder for most of June and July.

Robin Waters, Editor

welcometo the June 2014 issue of GIS Professional. . .

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. . . we suspectthat the finaloutcome willhave implica-

tions far beyondproperty

boundaries.

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joining the geography jigsaw

from the editorIssue No 58 June 2014


Pan-European datawelcomedMore than 1,500 users havedownloaded pan-European datafrom EuroGeographics since its1:1 million scale topographicaldatabase, EuroGlobalMap wasreleased as Open Data. A surveyon how the map is being usedhas revealed a wide range ofapplications including air trafficanalysis, emergency serviceaccessibility studies, mobilemapping, demographic and socioeconomic analysis, hydrology andferry line mapping. It has alsohelped to create archaeologicaldistribution maps and energy andenvironmental models, and beenwell received by those working inthe education sector.www.eurogeographics.org/form/topographic-data-eurogeographics

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Geospatial’s €69m+ to IrisheconomyA report commissioned byOrdnance Survey Ireland hasfound that the geospatialinformation industry contributessome €69.3m to the Irisheconomy and with multiplierimpacts, the estimate is morethan €120m. The use of mapsloaded with information ondemographics, environmentalresources and financial worth ofan area are used by many Irishbusinesses to determine markets.Other scientific and historicalorganisations use the maps todetermine the area’s importancein an investigation or review.

According to the report, theindustry generated sales valuedat €117.5m in 2012, andemployed some 1700 full-time

equivalent persons with totalsalaries of over 80m whilesupporting the employment of afurther 3000 people.

Explaining the significanceof the report’s findings, OSIchief executive Colin Bray said,“Of particular significance arethe efficiencies and savingsgeospatial information canprovide for the public sector.This is important in the contextof the Government’s PublicService Reform Plan 2014-2015,which refers to an intention toimprove public services throughmore efficient usage ofgeospatial information.”

OS back entrepreneursFour groups of entrepreneursfrom across Great Britain havereceived a share of £101,000funding to help turn their visionsand ventures into a reality.

The awards follow the latestGeoVation Challenge that looksfor great geography, technologyand design-based ideas whichencourage people to engage inactive lifestyles, particularly focus -ing on activities in open spaces.

Ramblers Scotland havewon £28k to help develop theirMedal Routes App to workalongside the existing website.The new app identifies andmaps short circular, bronze,silver and gold level walks fromwalking hubs. London basedPan Studio gets £26k to developtheir idea called Run an Empirewhich is an exercise strategygame, via an app, that uses GPSwith Ordnance Survey data torecord paths and routes whichplayers take. The conceptencourages players to ‘captureand maintain control’ ofterritory, using neighbourhoodsas arenas for play.

Mapsum, from Wimborne,gets £26k to develop Tagd, aservice that enables anyone, orany group, to create, share anddiscover custom interactiveroutes that containpersonalised, targeted media

messages at waypoints.OpenPlay, from London, wereawarded £21k including theCommunity Award of £1,000,to tackle the problem of notknowing where to go for aparticular activity by providingan online marketplace forbooking sports facilities.

Investment will create newGIS jobsA GIS company is planning tocreate five new jobs aftersecuring £150,000 growthfunding from The North WestFund for Venture Capital,managed by Enterprise Ventures.GeoGrafi, which is based inLiverpool, delivers high accuracyGPS-enabled solutions and 3Dspatial data to help organisationssuch as utilities and localauthorities to survey and managetheir assets in the field.

Map-based analysis fortourist venuesThe travel and leisure team atindependent market researchconsultancy BDRC Continentalhas been able to give clientsnew insights into the appeal ofmajor tourist attractions byusing GeoXploit fromMapMechanics. BRDC is alsousing it to analyse drivetimes tospecific tourist attractions and,by tracking visitors back to theirpoints of origin, is able toidentify promising areas forrecruiting additional business.Research executive EmmaHughes explains: “We can nowgive clients in this market sectormuch more granularinformation about thebehaviour of tourists visitingtheir sites, and help themattract future visitors moreeffectively.”

CONTRACTS & AWARDS

Tfl opts for GIS in the cloudA cloud-based GIS solution is tobe implemented by Transport forLondon (TfL). The new solution

Issue No 58 June 2014

news

Bluesky has created a map of Britain showing the health of thenation’s forests, fields and parks. Captured by colour infrared (CIR)sensors mounted on an aircraft, the map compares the ‘green-ness’ ofvegetation to give an indicator of health, vitality and even maturity.

The Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), used to createthe map, is a graphical indicator that can be derived from remotely-sensed data to assess live green vegetation. “While we generally seetrees, crops and plants as green, in reality the peak reflectance is in thenear infrared spectrum, which is invisible to the human eye,” explainsBluesky technical director James Eddy. “Up to 60 per cent of infrared isreflected back to the atmosphere and this is why infrared aerialphotography is invaluable in vegetation studies.” Using CIR, vegetatedsurfaces can easily be separated from non-vegetated ones. The NDVIinformation can also be used to assist in detecting how vigorouslyplants are growing, their maturity, insect attacks or water shortage.

Green map for Britain


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for TfL’s Commercial DevelopmentDirectorate provides improved GISperformance, greater accessibilityand transparency of propertyassets and more up-to-date andimproved functionality.

Using Intergraph’s GeoMedia,a hosted environment willconsolidate and enhancecapabilities and data that werepreviously spread across in-housedesktop systems, a commercialweb provider and an externalportal. The system also simplifiesdata management with TfL’ssmall-scale mapping data fromOrdnance Survey now beingupdated every six weeks ratherthan just once a year.

Cloud-based mapping forWest SussexParish Online, a cloud-basedmapping system, is now availablefor every town and parish councilin West Sussex, following a three-year partnership agreement withGetmapping. Using the system,West Sussex County Council issharing its definitive GIS data aswell as providing the mappingtool to help local councils carryout devolved responsibilities.

Duncan Barratt, communityand economic developmentmanager from West Sussex CCexplains the benefits: “As ourlocal councils gain moreresponsibility it’s important toensure they have the right toolsfor the job. Digital mapping is apowerful aid and can assistthem by providing locationintelligence and a unified viewfrom the county council acrossto the town and parish.”

Openreach buys OS dataOrdnance Survey has enteredinto a five-year, £23magreement with BT Openreachto supply data products,services and value addedsolutions. The range of OSpremium datasets providedinclude OS MasterMap(Topography Layer & IntegratedTransport Network Layer), OS


VectorMap Local and 1:50 000Scale Colour Raster. Theagreement includes addressingsolutions as well as extendingthe use of the web mappingservice, OS OnDemand. Theservice will enable allOpenreach engineers, to accessdetailed and up-to-date data onroad geometry, house numbers,landmarks and building names.

BRIEFSWith just a month to go before“Le Grand Départ” in Yorkshire,Ordnance Survey has teamed upwith cycling legend ChrisBoardman to launch a freecycling app to help cyclistsexperience the routes famouslyridden by the professionals. OSRide features detailed routes ofthe first three stages of the Tourde France, which comes to GreatBritain in July 2014.

Funding has been secured for thedevelopment of the RapidEye+satellite constellation. The fivesatellites will have an imagingcapacity far exceeding the currentRapidEye constellation’s capacity of5 million sq km per day. The super-spectral system will include 14bands including a panchromaticchannel with a resolution betterthan 1 metre. RapidEye+ is plans tolaunch in 2019.

Pitney Bowes has become aprincipal member of the OpenGeospatial Consortium enabling itto participate in OGC’s PlanningCommittee to explore market andtechnology trends and toparticipate in decisions on thefinal approval for standards.

Progress for INSPIREThe creation of a single source ofauthoritative Europeangeoinformation has moved a stepcloser as the INSPIRE-drivenEuropean Location Frameworkproject marks its first anniversary.So far the project has deliveredvital transformation tools andGeoLocator, a geo-referencing

service. It has also taken the firststeps towards launchingGeoProductFinder for findingavailable data, comparingmetadata and giving feedback. Itwill also provide licensing andpricing information for data that isnot ‘Open’ and is identifying third-party datasets that meet userrequirements for geoinformationlinked to statistical, demographicand environmental data.

Big Data charterThe Open Geospatial Consortiumis seeking comments on a charterfor a new Big Data DomainWorking Group. Big Data is anumbrella term for the digital datasurge in terms of volume, velocity,variety and the importance of thedata’s trustworthiness. Location-based and geospatial dataapplications are major contributorsand applications involve, forexample, high volume transactionswith mobile devices and location-aware sensors, growing use ofdiverse high-resolution airborne,orbiting and undersea imagingdevices, numerical model outputs,navigation through 3D represent -ations of indoor and outdoorenvironments, and new policiesaimed at preserving and reusinggeoscience and environmentaldata. The charter is available at:http://external.opengeospatial.org/twiki_public/BigDataDwg/

Participation in CityGML 3.0The OGC is seekingorganisations and individuals toparticipate in the developmentof the next major version of theCity Geography MarkupLanguage (CityGML). See thecall for participation athttp://www.opengeospatial.org/standards/requests/119.

Examples of changes in V 3.0will be level-of-detail concept,additional semantic modelstructures such as building floors,floor plans and utility networks,as well as new complex attributessuch as time series and metadata.New features will be designed to

minimise impacts on backwardscompatibility that might affectthe many communities using thecurrent version.

PEOPLEEsri UK has appointed DavidBrandin-Lain to a senior rolestrengthening support to AirDomain customers. His primaryrole will be to ensure that thecompany’s geospatial capabilitiesare optimised to meet defencerequirements within that domain.Brandin-Lain joins from the RoyalAir Force where he was asquadron leader in theIntelligence Branch. Mentioned inthe 2014 New Year’s Honours as arecipient of the AOC’sCommendation, his remitincluded managing the RAF’s AirIntelligence Centre’s team of 50analysts, providing dedicated airintelligence support to the RAF,Permanent Joint HQ and aviationassets throughout Defence.

Snowflake Software hasappointed Dr Nadine Alameh(above) as chief executive officerwith responsibility for Snowflake’sbusiness operations in NorthAmerica, and its continuedgrowth within the aviationindustry. “We’ve already seensome great success in our NorthAmerica business”, says CEO IanPaynter. “Hiring such anexceptional and world respectedtalent as Nadine is key to ourcontinued growth”. Prior tojoining Snowflake, Dr Alamehwas executive director of theInteroperability Program at theOpen Geospatial Consortium(OGC). She has also served as asenior technical advisor to NASA’sApplied Sciences GeospatialInteroperability Office.

There is more news of companies and organisations on our website at www.pvpubs.comTo get your company featured on these pages call Sharon Robson on +44 (0)1438 352617


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We need tobring together

the workaround

predictiveanalytics andlinked data to

sensibly harness‘big data’.

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“THIS IS TURNING INTO A PRODUCTIVE year for AGI –with plenty of substantive work underway todemonstrate the re-focus and hard work of thevolunteers on and off Council to whom I continue tobe hugely grateful. Because of the reach and theimpact of what we want to achieve with the Geo:Big5 and the Foresight Report 2015, I do want to ask foryou to consider whether you too can help to makethis year a ground-breaking one for the industry.

You will now have seen and hopefully are starting torecognise our new branding, which builds on our pastheritage and looks to the future. The Geo:Big 5 eventsare now well under way, leading on to the climax of theyear: the new-format Geocom in Warwickshire, comingtogether with the Awards Dinner on the final evening.Our next planning session in a month’s time will be alsoconsidering next year’s main themes to propose toCouncil, so do let us know your thoughts and ideas.

Not everyone will be aware that each of ourGeo:Big5 events is being associated with some form ofroundtable discussion – which then leads, in

combination with the event itself and furtherbackground research and discussion, to a white paper.These white papers are then feeding into the ForesightReport which we will publish for the beginning of 2015.

In parallel with the Geo:Big 5 events of this year,the core topics are:

• Future Cities• Open• BIM and Asset Management• Big Data• Policy

If you are interested in helping to author any of thesepapers, or indeed the Foresight Report itself, pleasedo let me know.

An Open Standards workshop was called on 12thMay to establish the need for an Open StandardsForum – and the appetite to support this. As I write,a final draft of the proposition is being prepared, andwill be circulated shortly. However, given the level ofenthusiasm and participation at the following OpenEvent on 13th May, which also covered Open Data,Open Source – and Open Debate (core to what AGI isabout!) – I think the small core of people whoinitiated this is really encouraged by the renewedinterest and focus on open standards developmentand implementation.

Final preparations are underway for the BIM and assetmanagement event on 5th June. With a great line-up ofspeakers, as well as exhibitors and free workshops, whichare now becoming a feature of the Geo:Big 5 Events, welook forward to some great discussions and interactions.

The conclusions from the BIM roundtable discussion(on May 14th – yes that was a busy week!), is that weneed to communicate a compelling image of what isrequired: the need for a common reference framework,an established approach to semantics/ontologies andsorting out the overlap of features/objects between CADand geospatial geometries such that funding andsupport can be established and momentum sustainedfor collaboration across existing and new stakeholders(such as OGC, BuildingSmart and W3C) to really deliverwhat is so badly needed. And we look to the softwarevendors as well as users to provide leadership in this. Weagreed that whilst visualisation is hugely powerful, it isthe analytics which really make the difference. We needto bring together the work around predictive analyticsand linked data to sensibly harness ‘big data’. Thephrase which fell out of that discussion was substituting“Augmented” Reality, with “Authentic” Reality. . .

The key to all this activity for AGI, is to encouragecolleagues and customers, existing and prospective,along to these events so that we can both showcase

what we currently do and also challenge the art of thepossible. I would hate these events to be cosy, inward-looking, pat-on-the back affairs. This should be aboutchallenge, debate and stimulation – celebrating thesuccesses while supporting and helping overcomebarriers and frustrations. And this can be acrossindustries with common problems, not just our own.

On a personal note, I am on the right side of what Ihad viewed as my nemesis: the final months ofcompleting a three-year MSc in coaching and behaviouralchange. In a bizarre way for the first couple of weeks I felta little as though I had been cast adrift without a paddle.But with the Geo:Big5 events moving forward, and theintellectual challenge and stimulus of the Foresight Reportahead of us, there is plenty still to do. I appeal to any ofyou who would like to help, or perhaps I’ll re-word as:SHOULD input to this, please get in touch.

We are also keen to encourage furthersponsorship and are aiming for a very widecirculation beyond the UK, and outside of thegeospatial industry, with support alreadyforthcoming from the Institution of Civil Engineers,and an article on Future Cities about to be publishedin Geospatial World. So please do give seriousconsideration to providing sponsorship in this criticalyear for AGI. Further, if you can give some time tosome of these activities, I can assure you that you willbe welcomed with open arms. Do follow and supportus on social media, through Twitter and LinkedIN.

And come along to the events and add to thebuzz. We would love to see you, and to get your input!

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AGI column


Dr Anne Kemp is ageographer who has workedin the infrastructure industryfor 25 years. She is currentlyserving as Chair for AGI andis also Director at Atkins andVice Chair of BIM4I, and ofICE's BIM Action Group.

Input, authors and feedback please!Changes ahead for AGI and the Chair calls for members’ engagement in the process.

Issue No 58 April 2014


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columnist adena schutzberg


IN MAY of this year Strava (http://www.strava.com),a company that offers tracking and competitive toolsto cyclists and other athletes, announced a new dataproduct that prompted some distress. The product,Strava Metro, includes detailed but anonymizedgeospatial data about cyclists’ routes in an area ofinterest. One of the first customers, the OregonDepartment of Transportation (ODOT), began talkingto Strava last year and received data in December.ODOT paid $20,000 for data about just under18,000 cyclists’ rides.

This spring, when the details were made public,some Strava users were disappointed to learn that thecompany was making money from “their” workout andtravel data. Clearly, these individuals forgot the well-known warning that if a product is free (and a versionof Strava is), you are the product. Strava’s privacy policyis quite clear: “Information about you and your use ofthe site may be aggregated with other informationcollected on the site or otherwise used in ways that donot personally identify you or constitute personally

identifiable information. This type of aggregated orstatistical information may be used by us to improve thequality of the site or for other purposes that we maydeem appropriate.”

It’s my understanding that this and relatedpolicies allow Strava to aggregate data and offerproducts like Metro for sale. The target market forthe datasets are organizations that want to buildbetter solutions for bicycles in specific geographies.ODOT has already tapped its dataset to find “better”bike counting locations around Portland’s bridges and

to determine where to put rumble strips on highways. While one group of users grumbled about Strava

making a profit off their data, another consideredjoining Strava specifically because ODOT used theseroutes as a source for planning. Strava users tendtoward the more competitive, and perhaps thewealthier cyclist, so there is a concern that the dataare not representative of the bicycling populationoverall. An ODOT study found that about 2.5% ofriders it counted using traditional methods used theapp. Still, experts suggest (and I agree) it’s unlikelyanother application, such as Portland, Oregon basedRideWithGPS, could provide a higher percentage.

Strava’s agreement with Metro subscribers restrictsany sharing of the raw data. However, userorganizations can create and offer reports and heatmaps based on them. The public and non-profits arewelcome to look at Strava generated heatmaps for free.

My sense is that businesses and other gatherers ofbig data, geographic and otherwise, have done theirhomework. They listened in the early days of user

generated data on the Web, back in 2000s, when thelikes of Tim O’Reilly encouraged Internet startups to“own the data.” If that was not possible, he went on,startups should attempt “to organize the data for useby others.” The startups learned about crowdsourcingand about how the more people who use a service, themore valuable it is. Strava and other companies like itare the Amazons of this decade. Instead of sellingphysical products (books and shoes), they sell individualsa service and perhaps a community, and, in turn, collectand organize the data they generate for sale.

The individuals who use these services andparticipate in these communities who grumble atefforts like Strava Metro, despite warnings related toprivacy, have not done their homework. The haven’tread the privacy policies. They haven’t consideredexactly how their participation in these communitiesbenefits the companies who host them, whether afee is paid or not. The good news is that at leastsome potential users are realizing that perhaps thebenefit may come back to them, such as thoseconsidering joining Strava.

It’s 2014. A good proportion of our planet’spopulation carries cell phones loaded with sensorsand location determination tools everywhere theygo. We, as potential users of services and joiners incommunities need to understand how we are part ofbig data, and the implications for ourselves asindividuals and as residents of a local or globalcommunity.

Wake up and read the small print! Businesses andgovernment understand the value of Big Geospatial Data, while citizens are only learning

their role in contributing to Big Data, argues Adena Schutzberg.

Adena Schutzberg isPrincipal of ABS Consulting

Group Inc.and Executive Editor of

Directions Magazine,www.directionsmag.com

A heat map of StravaMetro data forMelbourne, Australia.



GEOHAZARDS ARE BECOMING AN increasingchallenge in many major towns and cities across theglobe, and can cause significant local disruption to theinfrastructure and communication links both duringand after a geohazard event. A European fundedproject, PanGeo, has begun to increase the accessibilityof geohazard information available online to European,local and regional authorities, policy makers and the

public. PanGeo uses new methods of observing sub-millimetre ground motion using satellite radar dataintegrated with local geological knowledge to providebaseline geohazard information in urban areas.

What are they? In general, geohazards can bedescribed as natural or manmade phenomena thatmake the ground unstable. They can fall into two broadcategories: those that are sudden, obvious, wide areaand sometimes catastrophic, causing significant loss oflife and damage to property, such as earthquakes orlarge landslides; and those that are more insidious in

nature, slower and often invisible to the naked eye, suchas the effects of shrink and swell clays or compressibleground, which are generally of less risk to human lifebut can still account for billions of euros of damage eachyear. The types of ground motion that can be identifiedusing the approach adopted within PanGeo include:earthquakes, landslides, mineral workings, groundwaterabstraction and recharge, shrink and swell clays, solublerocks, compressible ground, collapsible deposits, landfilland rockfall. Many of these geohazards manifest asmeasurable terrain motion.

PanGeo started as a Framework 7 project fundedby the European Commission. The aim of the projectwas to make accessible baseline geohazardinformation for 52 of the largest towns and citiesacross Europe, which comprises two towns for eachEuropean country, with the exception of Luxembourgand Cyprus which have just one (Figure 1). Theproject was supported by 37 partners and focusedon the collaboration of: ESA qualified satellite radar

data specialists, who provided the ground motionresults derived from SAR data; 27 individual nationalgeological surveys, who provided their expertise inthe local geological and geohazard environment; ITand INSPIRE specialists; an expert user advisorypanel; geospatial data visualisation professionals;and the makers of the Copernicus Land Core Service‘Urban Atlas’. The initial phase of the project drew toa close at the end of January 2014, but the PanGeowebsite (www.pangeoproject.eu) remains available.

The system As part of the PanGeo service twoproducts are created for each town: a Ground StabilityLayer (GSL), which is an attributed vector polygon thatindicates areas of ground instability; and a GeohazardDocument (GHD) that describes the geologicalinterpretation for each GSL polygon. These productsare produced by the individual national geologicalsurveys and generated by the integration of:• Satellite Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI)

processing, derived from satellite radar data,which provides measurements of terrain motion;

• Geological and geohazard information alreadyheld by national geological surveys;

• Land cover and land use data contained withinthe Copernicus Core Land Theme ‘Urban Atlas’.

The specific GSL and GHD for each town can beaccessed and visualised via the PanGeo website, andupon user agreement to the licence conditions, towninformation can be downloaded via the “coveragemap”. The data are served in an INSPIRE-compliant

Enabling access to Geohazard information Manycities across Europe are threatened by geohazards, from earthquakes and landslides to clay

heave and landfill subsidence. Claire Roberts of NPA Satellite Mapping explains thePanGeo project which puts online information for 52 major European cities.

10

Geohazards: online access


Figure 2 – Extract of London GSL integrated with Urban Atlas viewedusing One Geology portal. ©PanGeo and Urban Atlas.

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Figure 1 – Location ofPanGeo towns andcities across Europe.



format via a modified version of the ‘shared access’infrastructure as devised for the DG ISM One-GeologyEurope project and are also available for visualisation inGoogle Earth. The individual GSL polygons are linked tothe GHD and enable a quick and simple understandingof the interpreted motions and provide uniqueinformation on urban geohazards for an individualtown or city. The web portal automatically integratesthe GSL for a given town with “Urban Atlas” tohighlight landcover influenced. This can be combinedwith population information from the EEA to providestatistical information regarding the approximatepopulation affected by an individual GSL polygon, atown or by land cover type (Figure 2).

The towns and cities that have been processedinclude a range of ground motions. Many are alreadyknown to the geological surveys, but by usingadditional information from satellite derived groundmotion and applying a consistent and validated methodacross Europe, the combined and individual geologicalsurvey knowledge has been enhanced. Examples ofground motions include: Underground mining in Stoke-on-Trent (UK), Ostrava (Czech Republic), Miskolc(Hungary); Underground construction in London (UK) orRome (Italy); Ground water extraction in Murcia (Spain);Made ground in Rotterdam and Amsterdam(Netherlands) and Copenhagen (Denmark); orEarthquakes in Lisbon and Faro, Portugal (Figure 3).

Positive outcomes for Rome One of the manypositive outcomes of the project has been the uptakefrom a number of local authority departments toPanGeo results and subsequent collaboration that hasoccurred between these local authorities and theirrespective geological survey. This has led to substantialbenefits on both sides. The Italians were one of the firstto seize the opportunity that PanGeo has provided forthe city of Rome (see this issue’s front cover), where theGeological Survey of Italy (ISPRA) has worked in closepartnership with the Local Authority of Rome (RomaCapitale) using experts from a number of differentprofessions including geologists, urban planners and GISspecialists to create a geohazard product that integratesall the available knowledge. Roma Capitale commentedthat “PanGeo products provide important indicationsand highlight potential geohazard areas where localauthorities should focus activities”. The project hasaided analysis of a number of practical examples withinthe municipality including: an area of construction ofunderground parking; checking for the presence ofgeohazards in an area of industrial structures; and tohelp prioritise action areas for a school monitoringprogramme (Figure 4).

In summary, PanGeo provides a rich database ofbaseline geohazard information across European townsand cities via a publicly available portal. It encourages usersto incorporate the GSL and GHDs for their area of interestinto their own systems, which in turn provides animproved understanding of any geohazards which may be

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present. Importantly, the validated approach andmethodology adopted within the PanGeo service givesconfidence that the information provided is robust andreliable. Future opportunities are being sought to ensurethe development, continuity and expansion of the serviceto support the prevention, preparedness and risk reductionphases of disaster management in urban environments.

For further details of the data available for the 52towns and cities across Europe please investigate thePanGeo coverage map at:http://www.pangeoproject.eu/eng/coverage_map,navigate to your town of interest and download theGSL and GHD files.

About the AuthorClaire Roberts is a remote sensing consultant forCGG where she works in the NPA Satellite Mappingdivision. She has a Master’s degree in RemoteSensing and over the past decade has been involvedin many aspects of EO data application. Mostrecently, she has been the project coordinator forPanGeo, a FP7 project funded by the EuropeanCommission. [email protected]

AcknowledgementsThe research leading to PanGeo results has receivedfunding from the European Union SeventhFramework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grantagreement no 262371.

Geohazards: online access


Figure 3 – Examples ofPanGeo productsgenerated by the

geological surveys andviewed in Google

Earth: Lisbon, Portugal(LNEG); Cluj-Napoca,

Romania (IGR),Salzburg, Austria

(GBA); and Ostrava,Czech Republic (CGS).

©PanGeo, ©2014 Google

Figure 4 –PanGeo GSL

for Romevisualised in

Google Earth.©PanGeo and

ISPRA,background

imagery©2014 Google.



Mobile devices,earth

observationsatellites and

the Internet ofThings are just a

few sourcescontributing to

creating theworld of Big

Data.

“

“

SO, BIG DATA AND LOCATION, why should you care?In their recent report on Big Data, McKinsey1 suggestit is becoming a key battlefield of competitiveadvantage, underpinning new waves of productivitygrowth, innovation, and consumer behaviour. One ofthe key application areas they highlight is geo-centric- personal navigation data. They assess theapplication of such data as being worth $800bn

worldwide during the current decade. Even ifMcKinsey are an order of magnitude too high in thisforecast, it is still a staggeringly large potentialmarket for the location industry.

So what is different about Big Data? Hasn’t thelocation industry been effectively dealing with verylarge volumes of information for many decades?

The clue to the challenge is the abundance ofdata now available to commercial organisations andgovernment. Mobile devices, earth observationsatellites and the Internet of Things are just a fewsources contributing to creating the world of BigData. But it is about more than just Volume. Big Dataalso describes datasets with a high Velocity ofchange (such as real-time data streams), and with awide Variety of data types - collectively known as thethree V‘s2.

This combination makes processing and analysisdifficult using conventional tools. In particular, thevolume and mix of structured and unstructured data,is a challenge for object-relational databasemanagement systems (such as Oracle andSQL*server) that most organisations currently use tounderpin their data management. Here the majordisruptive technology has been Hadoop, employed

by search engines to produce the almost instantquery response we have all come to expect fromGoogle et al.

The huge additional business value to be derivedfrom Big Data comes from what Accenture describe3

as finding new insights. These might includeidentification of financial fraud, increasing retailsales or sources of inefficiency in government. Noneof these are new, but the science of what is oftentermed predictive analytics in Big Data circles, isintroducing new tools and techniques which relyheavily on what we might have previously calledspatial analysis and 4D visualisation.

Big Data comes with a torrent of newterminology which needs mastering to converse withthe experts. The tag cloud below is a useful summaryof some of the key terms, highlighting storage andanalytics as the areas where location is critical. Theboxed text provides some definitions.

Applications According to John Morton, untilrecently with SAS but now an independent Big Dataconsultant, location figures in a wide range ofapplications because of its ability to reveal new

information patterns and present information tosenior executives visually. Some real examples wereshowcased at the recent Strata 14 conference on BigData in San Francisco including:

Transport – Ian Huston, Data Scientist at Pivotal,sees Big Data analytics as a way to bring techniquesfrom other disciplines, such as change pointdetection used in the wind turbine industry and cellpopulation analysis from biology to complexproblems of traffic management4.

Retail – Susan Ethlinger, Altimeter Group, describedan example of the use of location to identifyproblems in the supply chain of steak restaurants toillustrate deriving actionable intelligence fromexisting social and enterprise information sources5.

Security – Ari Gescher, Palantir, presented“Adaptive Adversaries: Systems to stop fraud andcyber intruders”, where he described the use ofgeocoding of servers through IP addresses andvarious other “location assets” to provideintelligence to banks.

Health – genomics, the science of gene sequencing

Big Data and Location – a real or imaginednew frontier? Andy Coote reports on some of the insights gained from

speaking and listening to some of the foremost experts in the field at the Strata 14conference on Big Data in San Francisco and ponders the place of location in Big Data.

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Strata 14 big data



. . . it’s close tothe top of the

“hype cycle” oftechnologytrends. . .

“

“


which involves very complex calculations on verylarge datasets takes centre stage in this sector.However, the medical insurers, such as KaiserPermanente in the United States are also makingheavy use of tools such as ArcGIS as part of their BigData strategy.

Insights Big Data’s problem is that it’s close to thetop of the “hype cycle” of technology trends – sohow do we discern the reality? A few gems from thegurus might help:

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Geoffrey Moore, the author of Crossing the Chasm,suggests that 2015 will be the year for Big Data. Keyfor vendors is building the “minimum viableproduct” and establishing a beachhead in asubstantial target market segment.

Ilya Sutskever of Google, suggests that little in dataanalytics has changed since the early days of artificialintelligence in the 1980s. There is much more datafor training, faster computers, more storage and thename has changed (to machine learning).Fortunately the brain is still far more sophisticatedthan anything we can imagine building as a neuralnetwork.

Max Gasner of Salesforce.com, argues that there areno real general-purpose predictive analyticsplatforms at the moment. He outlined the challengesfor the Big Data industry and academics, as the needfor BigML (a variant of XML for Big Data); a new userinterface paradigm; and probabilistic programminglanguages. In short, Big Data lacks the solid scientificunderpinning that Ted Codd provided for therelational database model, a generation ago. In otherwords - Big Data is Waiting for Codd!

Emil Eifrem, CEO at Neo Technology, developer ofNeo4j, which claims to be the most widely usedgraph database, and touted as the natural successorto the object-relational model, quoted predictionsfrom Forrester research that 25% of organisationswould be deploying such databases by 2017.

Location in Big Data Platforms Differentsuppliers appear to have different views on thepotential for location analytics in Big Data solutions.

SAP has taken the decision to embed Esritechnology into the core of their product, which theybelieve will enable their users to leverage moresimply geospatial tools as part of the HANA in-memory computing platform.

In contrast, Steve Jones, Cap Gemini, (partnerswith Pivotal in the Big Data space), believes thedominant approach will see designers buildinglocation analytics for their platforms as they find ituseful. According to Jones, Big Data analytics willborrow the algorithms of GIS via good developers

Strata 14 big data


TECHNICAL PRIMERHadoop - is a database file system for storageand large-scale processing of datasets onclusters of commodity processors. The conceptrelies upon storing data items multiple timesacross different processors/disks for resilienceand fast retrieval. Originally developed in 2005by two of Yahoo’s engineers it underpins mostof the search engines, Facebook, and many ofthe data mining solutions. It is an open sourceproduct but there are plenty of proprietaryimplementations.

Mapreduce – is the programming frameworkthat enables fast retrieval of data from Hadoopclusters. Originally developed by Google, it isbased on algorithms that schedule and handleparallel communications necessary to make thatretrieval fast and reliable. Put another way, itsupports massive multi-threading of processes.

NoSQL – is a term used to refer to the storageand retrieval of data which does not rely on SQLand the relational model of storage, of whichHadoop is typical. Although Hadoop is veryefficient at dealing with certain types of tasks,such as retrieval from unstructured sources,relational systems, such as Oracle andSQL*Server, are better at operations onstructured data, leading to the term beingredefined recently to Not only SQL.

Data Mining – is about discovering patterns inlarge datasets involving various methods drawnfrom machine learning (what used to be referredto as artificial intelligence), statistics, databasequerying and visualisation.

Graphs - the mathematical structures used tomodel pairwise relations between objects. A“graph” in this context is made up of vertices or“nodes” and lines called edges that connectthem. The classic graph in the geospatial worldis the link and node structure used to representa transport or utility network.

Geoffrey Moore ofCrossing the Chasm

fame gave ananimated

presentation.


but will not try to “shoehorn” existing products intotheir architectures.

Another aspect of the Big Data debate wasoutlined by Steve Hagen of Oracle. Speaking recentlyat a UN GGIM meeting, he suggested that real-timefeeds of location data are simply so huge that theyare unmanageable in raw form and that filtering atsource before loading into databases is the onlyviable solution. It seems to me however, thatalthough deciding what to keep requires skills whichgeospatial practitioners uniquely possess, it does pre-suppose you know in advance what insights youmight find.

Analysis So much energy is being pumped into theBig Data story, it won’t go away. Even if it is simply are-branding of concepts that have existed for a longtime such as business intelligence.

Why is it important to the location market?Because it is potentially a huge opportunity - well over50% of the presentations at the Strata conferenceused geo-centric use cases to demonstrate theirsolutions or ideas. Furthermore, there seemed to be ageneral under-estimation of the richness of insight thatlocation analytics (what we used to call spatial analysis)could bring to the party.

Tailpiece If you’d like to understand more aboutwhat Big Data means for the location industry, theAGI is organising an event on Tuesday 30thSeptember in London titled simply “Big Data andLocation”. Hosted at the prestigious IBM Centre onthe South Bank, it will bring together the mainplayers from the Big Data and Geospatial worlds toexplain technical concepts and showcase realapplications. For more information go to the AGIwebsite www.geobig5.com

References1 McKinsey Global Institute: Next Frontier forInnovation, Competition and Productivityhttp://www.mckinsey.com/insights/ business_technology/big_data_the_next_frontier_for_innovation

2 9 levers for Converting Big Data and Analyticsinto Results. Christy Maver, IBM.http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/thoughtleadership/ninelevers/

3 Realizing Data Value in the Insight Economy,Krista Schnellhttp://www.accenture.com/us-en/blogs/technology-labs-blog/archive/2014/03/17/realizing-data-value-in-the-insight-economy.aspx

4 Driving the future of Smart Citieshttp://www.slideshare.net/ihuston/driving-the-future-of-smart-cities-how-to-beat-the-traffic-pivotal-talk-at-strata-2014

5 Social Data Intelligence: Integrating Social andEnterprise Data for Competitive Advantage, SusanEthlingerhttp://www.altimetergroup.com/research/reports/social-data-intelligence

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Strata 14 big data

• Andy Coote is ChiefExecutive at locationconsulting specialistsConsultingWhereEmail: [email protected]: @acoote

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15joining the geography jigsaw


The level ofcoincidencebetween the

index polygonsand OS

MasterMap is‘the crux of this

issue’. . .

“

“

HOW MUCH ‘COINCIDENCE’ is there between the LandRegistry’s INSPIRE Index Polygons and OrdnanceSurvey’s MasterMap polygons? What should be the‘appropriate’ licence terms – and what shouldOrdnance Survey be able to charge for commercial re-use of the INSPIRE Index Polygons? OPSI hasrecommended that these questions be answered by OSand Land Registry by certain deadlines this summer.

The recommendations are made in a reportpublished on complaints made by 77M (“a smallcompany with Big Data”) against the Ordnance Surveyin December 2013. This follows protracted negotiationswith the Land Registry since June 2012 and direct withOrdnance Survey since September 2013. Thecomplaints were made under the Re-use of PublicSector Information Regulations and the Information FairTrader Scheme (IFTS). OPSI’s response was:

‘OPSI has upheld many of the issues raised by theComplainant. OPSI is not satisfied that the terms andconditions applied by the PSIH accurately reflect thevalue of the PSIH’s intellectual property in the INSPIREIndex polygon dataset. OPSI will work with the PSIHto establish the level of coincidence, the terms andconditions and the pricing levels.’(PSIH = Public Sector Information Holder, which inthis case is Ordnance Survey – Ed)

The complaints arise from 77M’s attempts to negotiate alicence to re-use the INSPIRE Index Polygons and theinvolved and protracted discussion with both the LandRegistry and Ordnance Survey. The former has releasedthe dataset for the whole of England and Wales, which

can be downloaded from their website free of charge,district by district. The dataset is released under the OpenGovernment Licence (OGL) – which normally allowscommercial re-use with attribution – but is in this case

restricted by needing the re-user to negotiate aseparate licence with Ordnance Survey, whichclaims significant intellectual property in what itconsiders to be derived data. The dataset is alsoviewable, free of charge, on data.gov.uk.

Six specific issues were raised under thePSI Regulations of which two, arguably themost important, were upheld and, althoughthe others were not upheld, OPSI have maderecommendations for better practice byOrdnance Survey for one of them and forthose raised under IFTS.

The level of coincidence between theindex polygons and OS MasterMap is ‘thecrux of this issue’ and a lack of agreement

between Land Registry and OS has led to a situationwhere a separate licence has to be negotiated by anycommercial re-user with OS. OPSI recommends(effectively mandates) that agreement be reached by30th June so that the dataset can be released eitherunder OGL or under a suitable commercial licencethat also needs to be agreed by the same date.

77M complained that the most recent pricing model

(proposed by OS for licensing the index polygons) wouldhave been based on a ‘per polygon’ charge for viewingand downloading which was apparently inconsistentwith other agreements and which would, for the wholedataset, work out more expensive than the cost of thesame area of OS MasterMap Topography Layer itself!

OS evidence suggested that it ‘did not expect anycustomer to purchase the whole INSPIRE Index polygondataset’. Furthermore ‘OPSI cannot see any justificationfor the cost of the polygons exceeding that of the PSIH’smost expensive product, particularly taking into accountthat there is less detail contained within the polygonsthan the MasterMap product, the INSPIRE Index polygondataset contains information from other sources, andthe data has already been collected.’

OPSI has therefore recommended that ‘the PSIHshould adopt an interim pricing regime to reflect the factthat the INSPIRE Index polygon dataset is notsynonymous with its MasterMap product and should notcommand a higher price’. This by 30th April 2014.Longer term pricing should be decided by 30thSeptember after the resolution of the ‘coincidence level’.

A complaint about the drawn-out timescales fornegotiations was not upheld but OPSI does make a

Polygon pricing – OS in the dock over re-use ofLand Registry Index Polygons A complex and to many obscure

issue is the subject of an Office of Public Sector Information report. The protagonistsinclude Ordnance Survey and Land Registry and a company with ideas for applying big data.

Polygons pricing and PSIH’s

Above: Inspire Index Polygons fromdata.gov.uk. Right: Inspire Index

Polygons downloaded direct fromLand Registry website.

. . . the LandRegistry INSPIREIndex Polygondataset is seenas potentiallyundercuttingMasterMapdespite its

obviouslimitations. . .

“

“

recommendation that OS should aim for best practice.OPSI do not believe that 77M should be able to offer afree ‘viewing’ service as available on data.gov.uk, northat the dataset format was an additional obstacle –not least because this was the choice of Land Registryand not OS. Finally, under the PSI Regulations, OS hasno obligation to police their licences; 77M argued thatthis could allow unfair competition. Under the fairtrading scheme OPSI made additional or reiteratedrecommendations to OS under the headings of:

maximisation – to avoid delays caused bydifferences over levels of intellectual property rights;

simplicity – to simplify the process of applying forcommercial re-use licences

transparency – to ensure that the OS websiteincludes clear information on how to obtain suchlicences and which terms are applicable

fairness – to resolve the level of coincidence of thetwo datasets and then resolve the pricing issueClearly some of the recommendations made by OPSIare of general application – not just to otherOrdnance Survey customers and other bodies‘deriving’ data from OS MasterMap and their endusers, but also perhaps to any other public sectororganisation that sells its data. There are several

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references in the report to Ordnance Surveyperceiving a threat to its business model and inparticular to other MasterMap customers.Apparently the Land Registry INSPIRE Index Polygondataset is seen as potentially undercuttingMasterMap despite its obvious limitations withrespect to completeness and to its legal rather thantopographical content. Any resolution of thisimpasse might involve very legalistic interpretationsof ‘derived’ and/or ‘inferred’ data – watch this space.

Could this report have any effect on the currentmoves to privatise the operational side of the LandRegistry and on any similar moves that the governmentmight suggest for Ordnance Survey? It seems thatflexibility to operate within an organisation’s ownboundaries is desirable and that extending thoseboundaries might increase the value of the organisationto the private sector. However any constraints on theabsolute right to set their own arbitrary prices forproducts or services might have the opposite effect. Canthe government have its own cake and eat it? OPSI mayhave struck a blow for the small entrepreneurs of thisworld but the government will sooner or later have todecide if it really wants lots of services springing up frompublic sector data or if it is content to get more moneyby selling off de facto monopolies. The recent example ofRoyal Mail and its postcodes seem to point to the latter.


Polygons pricing and PSIH’s

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ONE OF THESE DAYS I will finally buy a satnav andget to meetings on time! I had naively believed thatfinding my way to Old Trafford and the LancashireCounty Cricket Ground would just be a question ofgetting off the motorway and following the signs.Isn’t Old Trafford one of the most important sportinglocalities in the country? Or has the recent demise ofMan U led to the signs being removed? Perhaps thereturn of Lancashire to Division One of county cricketwill bring them back – at least on match days!

Talking of matches, I sat down at the nearest tableto the door when I finally got to conference to findthat my local (Huntingdonshire DC) address guru,David Lloyd, was leading a discussion on ‘Data

matching in practice’. This is, elected councillors pleasetake note, a non-trivial topic. In fact even when a localauthority finally gets all its departments using a singleaddress database (and that is still years away for many)there will always be the need to match incomingaddresses that do not have UPRNs and will not be in a‘standard’ format. Not only do the workers have todeal with the matching itself; they also have tocontinue to persuade jobsworths or pedants in otherdepartments that data protection should NOT be usedas an excuse for holding back on datasets. It seemscrazy that there cannot be a definitive ruling on what

can and can’t be matched without breaking the lawand yet this still seems to be one of the real issuesfacing address management teams.

I should explain that after introductions fromGeoplace MD, Richard Mason, and head ofengagement Steve Brandwood, the 250 odd

delegates were participating in round-tablediscussions. There were 24 tables with a facilitatoron each and everyone had 20 mins at a table beforemoving on and choosing another topic – twice.Although quite noisy in the room I found this formatvery useful for getting a glimpse of real peopletalking about real jobs that underpin much of oursociety from council tax and waste collection togrocery deliveries and the ‘postcode lottery’ of manypublic services. See box above.

The other two tables I listened to were discussinghow to integrate Rights of Way into street gazetteers

GeoPlace 2014 – everything definitelyhappens somewhere Rights of Way, BOATS and how coordinatedaddress databases are helping catch fraudsters were all on the agenda at the annual

“Everything Happens Somewhere Conference and Exhibition”. Robin Waters reports.

GeoPlace awards conference

Collaborative Round Table Discussion Topics• NLPG Data Entry Conventions 2014 • NSG Data Entry Conventions 2014 • Street Naming and Numbering challenges • Public Rights of Way, List of Streets and the

NSG• Adding Business Names to the gazetteer –

share your ideas • All about NLPG Health Checks • All about NSG Health Checks • Adoption of Central Maintenance

Data Matching: “It seems crazy that there cannot be adefinitive ruling on what can and can’t be matchedwithout breaking the law. . .


This wouldmean localgazetteer

officers beingable to update

the nationaldatabase on-lineand seeing the

results reflectedin their localgazetteers

immediately.

“

“and then how a planned central maintenance systemfor the national address database might work withexisting software and how it might impact the workof gazetteer officers. If I had thought that datamatching had too many legal implications thenRights of Way is in a league of its own.

There seems to be a general consensus that RoWsshould be in the National Street Gazetteer (NSG) butalso that there are many practical difficulties fromsimple lack of resources to fundamental data structureissues within the existing database. Not to mentioncurrent RoW maintenance being somewhat haphazardand hedged (get it?) around with legalities aboutdefinitive maps (1:10,000 paper copies) and theincredible complexity of sensibly moving them in thecase of development of housing or transportinfrastructure on the ground!

Have you heard of BOATs? They are byways opento all traffic – the ultimate right of way likely to bringcyclists, ramblers, horse riders and off-roaders all toa state of apoplexy at the first sign of mud. So,nothing to do with rights of access to waterways –that must be a different department to settlearguments between anglers and canoeists!

At the central maintenance table I bumped intoBob Barr – in his home city – and the greatprotagonist of an easily accessible national addressdatabase. The facilitator was Steve Brandwood andhe explained how they were hoping to pilot a centralmaintenance function for the national database laterthis summer. This would mean local gazetteerofficers being able to update the national databaseon-line and seeing the results reflected in their localgazetteers immediately. This would short circuit thecumbersome file upload process currently in use andalso mean that any future changes to databaseformats or functionality would only need to bechanged once and not have to await several softwaresuppliers needing to change existing systems.

But apparently those suppliers do not see this asa threat because they believe their future lies withusers rather than producers. The centralmaintenance functionality is to be developed inhouse at GeoPlace – not in Ordnance Survey. Itwould be a lot easier where both counties anddistricts – in two tier areas – are all working togetheralready. Mention was made of the desirability of the

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new system also being able to directly access RoyalMail’s address management system to be able toappend the new or revised postcodes at the sametime. Some practitioners expressed some scepticismabout how this could work!

After coffee we moved on to presentations – peptalks might be an old-fashioned description – fromCathy Coelho, principal chair of the regional chairsaddress group and her opposite number for streets,Glenn Dobson. Both showed how there had beencontinual improvement in local authorityimplementation of address and street gazetteermaintenance and both made a plea for morepractitioners to get involved with the regional groups.This would help to maintain the momentum forimprovement and help their peers raise awareness ofthe importance of gazetteers within authorities andchampion the potentially better services and reducedcosts that full implementation can deliver.

Awards Before lunch we then had the annualawards ceremony but without the Hollywoodtheatricals and with some of the lesser awards noteven being handed over in front of the camera! Youreditor has been a judge on the awards panel forseveral years but our task was much simpler this year– there was only one Exemplar Award – and thepanel was pretty much unanimous in its decision.

We awarded runner up to Oxford City Council forits Virtual Deeds Room project run in conjunction withthe voluntary registration of council property using oldrecords, new technology and a vision to deliver.Oxford’s is very much an internal project with benefitsmainly to the council itself. The winner, on the otherhand, is a classic case of the whole being more than thesum of its parts. The Joint Emergency Services Group(Wales) shows how the Multi Agency InformationTransfer (MAIT) project – using AddressBase – can savemoney as well as saving more lives. Tony Bracey’s articleon MAIT appears on page 20 and I need write no morehere. We should also mention Northumberland CountyCouncil which was highly commended for its approachto using gazetteers to help with the new IndividualElectoral Roll and the continuing requirement to reviseelectoral boundaries and choose the best places forpolling stations.

Awards were presented by Helen Platts, the LocalGovernment Association’s member on the board ofGeoplace. As well as the Exemplar there were alsoawards for custodian of the year (Marilyn Georgefrom the East Riding of Yorkshire), most improvedaddress data (Ribble Valley Borough Council) andmost improved street data (Milton Keynes Council). Icouldn’t help whispering that having a grid patternof streets must make that easier! Other awards, toonumerous to mention were made at regional leveland for reaching a gold standard. The full list can befound at www.geoplace.co.uk


The Editor (farright) pays raptattention to around-tablediscussion.




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Detecting and preventing fraud Sally Gubbins,the National Fraud Initiative coordinator workingfor the Audit Commission, showed how acoordinated address database is becoming a vitalcomponent of their work to prevent and detectfraud. Since 1998 they have used their powers – asa neutral party – to match data from differentsources for different purposes. So participatingbodies, such as the Student Loans Company andlocal authorities will supply data that can bematched and then sent back for further action.

The NFI has detected fraudulent pensionpayments to the deceased to the tune of £450m(15,000 cases) and has been instrumental in saving£161m of council tax by detecting fraudulent claimsfor single person discount.

NFI are now going to use the Unique PropertyReference Number in a similar way to which theyuse people’s National Insurance Number. This will,they believe solve, for example, the problem ofconfusing addresses in blocks of flats. They are alsoaiming to move the emphasis from fraud detectionto fraud prevention, by enabling the validation andcross checking of claims being made in real time.All of their work is subject to the ‘code of datamatching practice’ which, among other things,

mandates the stripping out of any data not actuallyneeded for the matching in question.

No cricket – just hard graft The final player of theday came from Barnsley, across the Pennines in thewhite rose county. I am hoping that Riley Marsdenwill have something on their experience ‘in thecloud’ for us next time. So, a day in Old Traffordwithout the sound of leather on willow and with theother lot down to a player manager!

Addresses and street names are just taken forgranted by the vast majority of the population andonly hit the headlines when things go wrong – withperhaps the blind following of satnav instructionsbeing top of the list. But a glance at the national fraudinitiative clients shows just how useful good addressmaintenance can be. Will we see all our footpaths onthe national street gazetteer? Who knows. What wecan be certain about is the dedication and persistenceof gazetteer managers overcoming their lack ofresources and yet providing a service which candemonstrate savings and efficiencies right across thecountry and across a whole range of disciplines – wehave just got to shout louder and pick up onpoliticians that belittle public servants to thedetriment of all their constituents.

. . . NFI hasdetected

fraudulentpension

payments to thedeceased to thetune of £450m. . .

“

“DISTANCE LEARNING GIS PROGRAMMES Study for a postgraduate

qualification in GIS by distance learning

Educating GIS Professionals Worldwide www.unigis.org

UNIGIS UK has been at the forefront of GIS education for over 20 yearsproviding distance learning-based postgraduate education and training inGeographical Information Systems and Science. Our programmes supportthe personal development, career advancement and career changeambitions of students typically already in employment. September 2011sees the launch of our new suite of Masters programmes to meet thechanging needs of the GI-related economy, those programmes are:

PgC/PgD/MSc in Geographical Information Systems - providing abroad grounding in the major aspects of contemporary GIS

PgD/MSc in Applied GIS - focuses on the applications of GIS andGeographical Information

PgD/MSc in Geographical Information Technologies - which providesthe opportunity to look at the technologies underpinning GI solutions

Established in 1991, UNIGIS UK is a collaboration between Manchester MetropolitanUniversity and the University of Salford. We have a proud track record of helping ourstudents achieve their goals. Visit http://www.unigis.org for further information.

[email protected] +44 (0) 161 247 1581



. . . an innovativeapproach that

offerssignificant

improvement inthe deployment

of resources,accuracy of

information andsituationalawareness.

“

“

WHAT’S THE POINT OF developing a concept thatyou know will create efficiencies, make a differenceto the way public services are delivered andultimately save lives, and then place it in the “toodifficult” box?

Perhaps this is putting it a little too strongly butover the last few years, local government andemergency service staff have worked tirelessly tocreate an address dataset that if used wisely, will notonly create significant efficiencies, but make a realdifference to the safety of emergency servicepersonnel and achieve significant beneficialoutcomes for citizens.

Does this sound like the usual rhetoric used bystrategic thinkers to sell a concept? Well yes.However one concept – Multi Agency InformationTransfer (MAIT) is very close to becoming a reality.What is now needed is the determination andsupport to make it part of everyday business andaccept that all of us have a role to play.

DEIT leads to MAIT In 2011, the Welsh Governmentand UK Cabinet Office agreed to develop a mechanismto electronically transfer incident information betweenemergency responder organisations. The ‘DirectElectronic Incident Transfer’ (DEIT) project wasestablished and, over a six-week trial period during2012, used a common address dataset and secureinfrastructure, to successfully share 1200 incidentsbetween South Wales Fire and Rescue Service, GwentPolice and Newport City Council. It also successfully

transferred ‘101’ information1 between Gwent Policeand Newport City Council.

Electronic incident transfer is an innovativeapproach that offers significant improvement in thedeployment of resources, accuracy of informationand situational awareness. It also reduces the risk ofwidespread failure and improves resilience, efficiencyand safety. This unique opportunity will transformthe way that emergency services and otherresponder organisations share information in thefuture and have a demonstrably positive impact uponboth service providers and citizens.

The re-use of address data from localgovernment, a common information platform on apublic sector network using open standards andavailable over mobile devices, clearly demonstrates acommitment to the Government Digital Agenda andthe principles of open standards.

There is a projected saving of 18,000 man-hoursacross all the emergency services in Wales, basedupon evidence gathered from control managersthemselves and ongoing discussions to map theoperational processes are acting as a catalyst for the

identification of further improvements in informationflow and service provision.

Since then, the project has been given a new name– the ‘Multi Agency Information Transfer’ (MAIT) andhas a new multi-agency project board led by a deputychief constable, which has concentrated efforts onimplementing electronic incident transfer for thewhole of Wales during 2014/15 to prove the conceptfor wider UK implementation from late 2014 onwards.

Tangible savings This innovative approach will notonly reduce the operational response times inrelation to emergency incidents and improve thequality and timeliness of incident data, but willachieve tangible financial savings within the first yearof operation. Several test scenarios have proven thereduction in time for mobilising multiple respondersfrom over 4 minutes to 16 seconds. Faster incidentresponse times reduce the impact on those involvedin an emergency and increases confidence in theincident location. The approach also reduces the riskof widespread failure and improves resilience,efficiency and safety.

The design is based upon the government’s opendata standard principles and the government’snational address gazetteer. The solution is therefore

“MAIT” approach to deliver faster responsetimes and savings A pilot project in Wales may lead to a UK wide system

that could deliver savings of thousands of man-hours to emergency responders andpotentially save lives. Tony Bracey of the Welsh Government explains the Multi Agency

Information Transfer (MAIT) system.

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Wales efficiency savings



. . . someemergency

services wereusing the UPRN

within theirgazetteer

managementssystem but notinforming their

localgovernmentcolleagueswhen they

noticed errors. . .

“

“


scalable and capable of facilitating informationsharing between all emergency responders and, inthe future, between all 1st and 2nd level respondersincluding local government.

As this approach is based upon the localgovernment maintained property gazetteer as thecommon reference point between emergencyresponders and wider public service, it reduces theresource requirement of emergency serviceorganisations currently maintaining propertyinformation. It also significantly increases the accuracyof location information and implementations withinthe fire and rescue services in Wales, the Welshambulance service trust and Gwent police suggest animprovement in accuracy of over 20%.

The Coroner’s Report into the London 7/7bombings recognised the work already undertaken inWales with regard to electronic informationexchange and the potential benefits to emergencyservices of a common address approach.

Within the Welsh police forces, over 100,000calls per annum are received from, and made to,other agencies. This equates to over 300,000 callsper annum across the three emergency services inWales offering a potential to save over 18,000 hoursof emergency service control room staff time spenttelephoning other agencies. Integration with LocalGovernment on existing interactions and future‘101’ messaging could easily double this saving.

Secure connectivity The longer term sustainabilityof the MAIT project has significantly improved throughfunding from the Welsh government to establishsecure connectivity to the public service network inWales (PSBA). This secure connectivity also links toother government networks. Recent discussions withboth Surrey and Nottinghamshire police forces, whichalso lead multi-agency partnership groups, provide theopportunity to ensure a long-term sustainable solutionand to capture robust evidence for the evaluation offuture investment.

The project has also engaged with stakeholdersfrom across all UK agencies including, for example, theScottish Government and the Maritime andCoastguard Agency. In addition, British APCO(Association of Public Safety Officials) has agreed totake forward the liaison with the UK government’sOpen Standards Board and will also engage withnational suppliers of command, control andcommunications systems. MAIT also has the capabilityfor sharing picture or video files to further enhancesituational awareness and evidence gathering.

The pilot phase electronically transferred ‘101’information between a police force and a unitaryauthority which, following the implementation ofelectronic incident transfer between Welsh policeforces, will be considered for further improvements toefficiency, collaboration and use of digital technology.

The project is now showing that the most

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exciting opportunity exists with the ability to link theMAIT ‘Hub’ to some form of geospatial platform andto present this information via mobile devices. Thiswill enable responders not only to assess incidentswith physical features but also to map the location ofvulnerable people and or other pieces of keyinformation in order to deploy resources.

Once the emergency service incident transfer iscomplete, we will then look at integrating localgovernment indicators on vulnerable people,perhaps health indicators like oxygen cylinders andother ones; and if we can not only share thisinformation at the same time as an incident butplace it on a map alongside incident information, wereally have something powerful for 1st and 2ndresponders. The scenario could be an accident thatsends a cloud of toxic smoke. Using Met office andhealth information, incident commanders can seethe properties where there are citizens with pre-existing breathing problems. Or perhaps in a floodscenario assistance can be sent to those propertieswhere there are citizens with mobility issues.

Other areas Following the trial, several emergencyservices across both Wales and England stated thatthis approach had been tried and partially adoptedbut using direct ‘point to point’ connections and notwith the UPRN as a common identifier – merely theprocess of passing an ‘envelope’ of information, theincident, between same agency partnerships.

It was also apparent that some emergencyservices were using the UPRN within their gazetteermanagements system but not informing their localgovernment colleagues when they noticed errors oromissions. I am not criticising the ‘point to point’connectivity, in fact it’s a great way of breaking downthe inter-agency cultural barriers that get in the wayof change. It is these types of barriers that lead to areluctance for one organisation, in this instance thelocal authority, to assume responsibility for a keydataset and the emergency services trusting localgovernment to maintain and update it.

To achieve this, several significant barriersneeded to be overcome: emergency services mustaccept that local government has and is responsiblefor address data. There is no need to maintainproperty information; emergency services have aresponsibility to inform their local governmentcolleagues if they are aware of the data beinginaccurate. This requires significantly less resourcethan maintaining the whole dataset as before; MAITreplaces an insecure telephone call, it does notrequire layers of technical security; and the transferof this information is covered under the numerousinformation sharing agreements already in place; noother agreements are required at this stage.

1 101 is the national number for non-emergencycalls to the police.

Wales efficiency savings




LOCAL AUTHORITIES have traditionally maintained amultiplicity of back-office systems with standaloneaddress feeds. Citizens may register on the electoralrole but may not always notify council taxdepartments as there is no direct legal requirementto do so. It is the responsibility of the council toensure that all citizens pay council tax, whereapplicable.

Local authorities work hard to keep up with changesto properties, such as occupancy and change of use. Asimple change in occupancy or address may often

require processing across several departments, withperhaps only one department holding the correctinformation. This is both time consuming and prone toerrors. Welsh local authorities needed a solution tomake the process more efficient, reduce errors anddetect potential avoidance and fraud.

Welsh local authorities needed to ensure thatchanges to, and within, a property were identified atthe earliest possible opportunity and that thisinformation was shared throughout councildepartments where appropriate. Address data isused across many departments, and the UniqueProperty Reference Number (UPRN) is used to ensureproperty data can be synchronised effectively andcommunicated accurately between departments. Thesynchronisation and reconciliation identified:

• Previously unbilled or incorrectly billed properties.• Self-contained annexes in breach of approved

planning conditions (leading to further revenueincome.)

• The sheer scale of year-on-year lost revenue.

A simple misunderstanding about properties withsimilar names can lead to misallocation of council taxbands, loss of revenue for the council and frustrationfor residents. Improved processes and communicationnow ensures that council systems are kept up to dateand changes are implemented as early as possible.

Having proved the value of the pilotproject, the Welsh Government has facilitatedthe roll-out of the programme throughoutWales, with some English authoritiessubsequently adopting the methodology.

The UPRN is allocated by local authoritieswhen producing their Local Land and PropertyGazetteer (LLPG) and is fed into the NationalLand and Property Gazetteer hub, managed byGeoPlace® (a joint venture between OrdnanceSurvey and the Local Government Association).The information supplied is then supplemented

with additional information from Ordnance Surveyand Royal Mail® and used to form AddressBase® thedefinitive source of address and property informationfor Great Britain. AddressBase is available to thepublic sector through the Public Sector MappingAgreement (PSMA), enabling all to benefit fromspatially enabled, accurate and consistent addressingdata.

The benefits from this initiative include increasedrevenue from identification of missing properties –over £100 000 from Newport and Cardiff alone, with

a further £160,000 from the nine additionalparticipating local authorities. Additionally, futuresavings, based on projections, are likely to be over£0.5m across Wales and potentially in excess of £7mwhen extended throughout England and Wales.

Other benefits include:- reduction in errors through use of the UPRN

avoiding confusion.- efficient processing through system synchronisation,

leading to faster debt collection and reducingduplication of effort between departments.

- reduced fraud – the project can be extended toinvestigate potential fraud in council tax singleoccupancy discounts and housing benefit.

- wider intelligence gathering and sharing by otherpublic sector organisations (for example,emergency services), who are now underpinningtheir systems with the UPRN.

Data products used:• Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRN)• Local Land and Property Gazetteers (LLPG)• AddressBase*The local authorities involved used the UPRNs fromtheir Local Land and Property Gazetteer, but anypublic sector organisation could do the samethrough the use of AddressBase under the PublicSector Mapping Agreement.

Good address management delivers savingsThe use of Ordnance Survey’s AddressBase and the UPRN system is proving to deliver

significant savings, following a Welsh Government led project linking electoral registration,revenue and benefits and other systems.

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Addressing: the benefits


‘Projected benefitsare likely to be over£500 000 acrossWales – potentiallyin excess of £7million extendedthroughout Englandand Wales’Shaun Powell,Newport City Council

Above: synchronizingproperty data allowsanomalies to beidentified.



. . . a fast growingemployment

sector forgraduate

geographers.

“

“

AGI VOLUNTEERS Abigail Page and Val Marlowe,along with RSGS Education Convenor Erica Caldwelland AGI/RSGS vice chair Bruce Gittings, organised theday’s programme with the generous cooperation ofseveral industry and academic professionals. Thisaimed to give the Higher and Advanced Highergeography pupils an overview of the breadth ofapplications for geographic information, the prospectsfor employment in this flourishing sector, and theexciting developments within GI as a vital componentof initiatives such as the Future Cities protocol.

Meeting figures from academia and industryprovided a valuable opportunity for the young peopleto learn more about the scope of a career in geographicinformation as well as a unique opportunity to speakwith RSGS president and TV personality Iain Stewart.

‘This was a particularly innovative event - itopened the eyes of young geographers to newaspects and applications of geography which couldlink to an exciting range of possible careers’, explainedErica Caldwell.

University Visit While conference delegatesattended the morning presentations, the Higher andAdvanced Higher Geography pupils made their way tothe University of Glasgow. They were welcomed to theUniversity Library’s map collection by John Moore,college librarian and an expert on early Scottish mapsand mapmaking. Along with teachers David Rowlandsand Laura Johnston, the school group were given apresentation on historical mapping, with a focus on theGlasgow area relevant to their school projects throughto relatively modern examples of cartography andpresent day online resources.

AGI and RSGS members welcomed the group tothe magnificent surroundings of Glasgow CityChambers, where Bruce Gittings, who is also Director,GIS Programmes at the University of Edinburgh,introduced the current GI industry and stressed itsimportance as a fast growing employment sector forgraduate geographers. The pupils were encouraged toshare their ideas for further study and careeraspirations, and asked to consider how GI could play a

part in these as the afternoon progressed. A series of short talks were given by commercial

organisations and sponsors (Esri UK, Ordnance Survey,Landmark, and thinkWhere) describing and demonstratinghow maps and data are currently used by the GI industryin a wide range of applications from habitat managementto organising disaster relief operations.

AGI Scotland is grateful to all of the exhibitors andsponsors who were happy to answer many questionsfrom the pupils. Particular thanks are due to Ian Holtfrom Ordnance Survey who prepared a comprehensive20 minute talk complete with slides and videos on veryshort notice, looking at the public perception ofmapping, and the use of spatial data products from OSOpen Data to open source and crowd sourcedapplications such as the OSM mapping of Haiti andMap Kibera project.

The Highlight The highlight of the day for the pupilswas a personal presentation from Professor IainStewart, who gave a wide-ranging and interactive talk

– finding out the pupils’ interests, encouraging them intheir study of geography, making the links with futurecareer prospects, and conveying his fascination with thesubject and passion for conveying that knowledge tonon-expert audiences.

Questions and answers covered topics from thegeological development of the local area, theprovenance of the marble surrounding us in the CityChambers, the best place on earth to film, and just howyou jump into the Victoria Falls!

Following the talk Professor Stewart chattedinformally with pupils and teachers, and was happy tofeature in a number of selfies taken by the pupils.Shortly afterwards the students joined the 170conference delegates to hear Professor Stewart’sclosing presentation where he emphasised theimportance of understanding the past lives of cities inthe development of future cities. Speaking afterwards,he said, “This is exactly what RSGS should be doing -mapping out the future for young geographers”.

AGI Scotland was delighted at the success of thevisit, and the unanimously positive feedback from allinvolved. Principal Teacher of Geography at DouglasAcademy, David Rowlands added “. . . the pupils (andstaff!) had a great time, both at the university and atthe conference, and some pupils have even said thatthey’d like a job working with GIS now!”

We’d like to thank everyone who generouslycontributed their time and expertise to make the dayinspiring and memorable for the pupils. Please feelfree to contact us with any enquiries and ideas forfuture events.

Catch ‘em young! AGI Scotland and the Royal Scottish GeographicalSociety hosted a party of 20 students from at the recent “Geo: The Big 5” event in

Glasgow aimed at developing links between education and the GI industry.

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AGI Scotland school visit


Students were delightedwith the chance to talkinformally with so manygeography specialists.



. . . faults mayhave been downto the engravers

although thesurveyors’

tendency to setup their HQ atthe local inn

suggestsanother reason. . .

“

“

AMELIA EARHART’s observation that “it’s easier tostart something than to finish it” is certainly true, asany writer stuck at the bottom of page one willtestify. But when, and how, do things finish? Often

there is no definite conclusion but rather a steadyprogression that leads past or round the original goaland towards results unimagined at the outset.

So it proved when in late 2005 three people hadthe idea of publishing historical maps that matchedthe scale, coverage and projection of the present-dayOrdnance Survey Landrangers. The time waspropitious: suitable technology existed, as did agrowing interest in local and family history. Soinspired, Cassini Publishing was formed.

The maps used OS maps used for this project werepublished from 1805 and are now known as the OldSeries. They were the first consistent and completemaps of the country, created initially for the southerncounties to assist civil defence against the threat ofNapoleonic invasion but thereafter expanded into along-overdue national survey.

The number of sheets was in the hundreds, somanageable. The scale was one inch to the mile(1:63,360), so within touching distance of thepresent-day metric scale of 1:50,000. The date range

was 1805 to 1874 (it was a longproject, starting as OS had to fromscratch). This last point should havesounded warning bells – but more ofthat later. The technical challengeswere considerable but the taskappeared feasible.

The initial job was finding suitableoriginals. Likely organisations, includingthe copyright libraries and the RoyalGeographical Society, were contacted, aswere many cartographic experts. Asuitable scanner was obtained. At thispoint, a problem appeared.

Two centuries of handling andexposure to the air had not improved the

originals. Some proved difficult to work with, othersimpossible. Stains and, to some extent, discolourationcould be dealt with: folds, tears and ink spread weremore difficult. Where necessary, maps were re-sourced.Some needed to be scanned several times. Eventually amore-or-less suitable asset of originals was digitallycreated.

The next task was to create a seamless digitallayer from which enlarged and re-projectedLandranger-matching tiles could be created. First, thesheets had to be joined, which involved cropping themaps to the neat line. At this point, two furtherobstacles emerged.

First, and perhaps obviously, the maps had never

been designed to be joined. Surveying errors andchanges in style and head-office instructionscombined to create unwanted features ranging fromtypographical variations to non-abutting roads: allpart of the essential nature, even the charm, of theoriginals but aspects that many present-day eyesmight perceive as imperfections.

Lonely task In fact, considering the scope of thetask, the results were in general stunningly accurate.History provides plenty of examples of measurementsthat went catastrophically wrong (the SNCF/RFF trainfiasco being the most recent) but Ordnance Survey’s19th-century work is certainly not amongst them.Most mistakes were minor and almost all wereprobably unnoticed until a map needed to be joinedexactly to its neighbour, as Cassini was doing. Someof the faults may have been down to the engraversalthough the surveyors’ tendency to set up their HQat the local inn suggests another reason fordiscrepancies. Often surveyors had no such firesidecomforts to distract them, as William Wordsworth

Mapping the Past Anyone who has tried to accurately match oldOrdnance Survey mapswith the current Landranger series will soon realize that it is not aneasy task. Brian Quinn explains the painstaking process that Cassini Publishing has been

through in creating its unique range of historical maps.

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OS maps: historical editions


Cassini uses contemporary illustrations on its map covers and was particularlyfortunate as the 1920s, the period of the Popular Edition, happened to be oneof the golden ages of British watercolours. Two different styles are shown here.Harold Sutton Palmer's autumnal portrayal of the Derwent is almost timelessin its composition, though perhaps not its style; by contrast, A.R. Quinton'svibrant view of Lyme Regis could only have come from this decade. Thesignificant item here is, of course, the motor car, soon to overtake the horse(literally in this painting) as the dominant method of transport.



poetically recorded after encountering a solitaryfigure and his “outlandish devices” on the summit ofBlack Comb in Cumbria in the autumn of 1811:

“A geographic labourer pitched his tent With books supplied and instruments of art, To measure height and distance; lonely task, Week after week pursued!”

“Decade after decade” would have beenmore accurate. Chivvied along byindefatigable senior OS officers such asWilliam Mudge, Thomas Colby and SirHenry James, the army of ‘geographiclabourers’ spread across the land,struggling in all weathers and seasonsup and down roads and tracks thatsometimes proved inadequate for theircumbersome equipment. For obviousreasons they had no reliable maps toguide them. Outright hostility was oftenencountered from those who suspectedthe visitors’ motives: on one occasionseveral surveyors, resplendent in newblue uniforms, which unfortunatelymade them look like Napoleonicsoldiers, were half killed by patrioticCornish villagers. Against this fraughtbackground the occasional lapse ofconcentration can be forgiven.

Temptation of correction The temptation to digitallycorrect any errant line-work, howsoever caused, wasone Cassini briefly considered and then as quicklyrejected. For one thing, this would have altered theoriginals, always dangerous with historical documents;for another, the task would have been almost never-ending.

More serious was the problem that the original earliersheets had been constructed using nine separate originsand on three central meridians, the easternsheets on Greenwich and the western ones

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These map extracts (post re-projection, all at 1:50,000) show the

same area from four differentperiods. Note how the dark hachures

in the earliest map give way overtime to contour lines. These and

other differences in the maps’ colour,content and style reveal the pre-

occupations and technology of theage that created them as much as

they describe the actual changes tothe human landscape.

Map dates (first publication): OldSeries 1816. Revised New Series1898. Popular Edition 1920. New

Popular Edition 1945.



“If you imaginea jigsaw puzzle,. . . with tens ofthousands ofpieces, some

overlapping andothers missingor damaged,

“

“on 3°W. This left the central sheets having to fit betweenthese blocks which resulted in their having narrower,trapezial shapes. Although it is unlikely any of these earlysheets were constructed on a strict projection, the sheetsnorth of an approximate line between Preston and Hullemployed a Cassini Projection with a single origin. (Notethat “Cassini” in this connection is a mapping projectionand nothing to do with the publishers.)

At this point, something else became clear. Oncejoined, the variations in the weight of the high-ground hachuring between one original sheet andthe next appeared at times almost brutal. Worse,these artistic swirls, which varied from graceful tointrusive, at times obscured more importantinformation such as place names. It’s true that in the19th century high ground was more of an obstaclethan in today’s motorised age but in some areas thelandscape appeared Alpine; in others, almostHimalayan. Numerous engravers had left their markon the work and some had a lighter touch thanothers. Many of the hachures that needed to beknocked back were darker than the type that neededto be accentuated. To correct this balance andimprove the overall legibility, a complex and delicateseries of digital-enhancement routines were applied.What worked well for one area did not always do foranother without adjustment: so, yet again,automation was impossible.

With later series, printed in colour and withhachures less prominent or non-existent, thesechallenges were often replaced by others. The RevisedNew Series sheets, for instance, had background tintswhich varied from pale yellow to dirty pink, all of whichneeded to be harmonised as far as possible. Onceagain, careful compromises had to be made betweenauthenticity and present-day aesthetics.

Character and challenges “Every aspect of thework was demanding,” recalls James Anderson, oneof Cassini’s founding directors and the person incharge of the map-layer creation. “The Old Series,being the earliest and in mono, was in many waysthe hardest, particularly as it was the first one weworked on. But each series had its own character,and so its own challenges that needed to be met.”

Having produced five one-inch series, Cassini thenturned its attention to the County Series at 1:10,560(six inches to the mile) and 1:2,500 as well as othermaps at still more detailed scales. Although a good dealof geo-referenced and geo-rectified source mappingwas available it was felt this could be upgraded andmore mapping was often needed to plug gaps andexpand the coverage. As these involved respectively 25and 125 times more sheets than the one-inch ones,many problems increased proportionately. Furthermore,some editions of the maps only extended to the countyline and each county was projected from its ownmeridian (and sometimes more than one).

“If you imagine a jigsaw puzzle,” Anderson

suggests, “with tens of thousands of pieces, someoverlapping and others missing or damaged, eachgroup of which needs to be slightly stretched tomake it fit together with its neighbours, then youhave some idea of the task we faced for each series.Most GIS operations are predicated on consistentoriginal data – this one wasn’t. We also realised thatthe scans could be enhanced and so wrote the mostcomplex series of routines we’d yet devised to getthem to an acceptable standard.”

This took several months for each series. Moreare constantly being added and all are in a state ofconstant upgrade. As technology and processingspeeds improve so options are available which werewishful thinking even half a decade ago. Forinstance, larger file sizes are today more acceptablefor consumers, many of whom buy the maps as PDFs,so higher-resolution data can now be supplied.Although some perceived imperfections areimpossible to correct, considerable and ongoingprogress has been spent on enhancing many of thetiles to create cleaner and more balanced results.

From Cassini to Transverse Mercator Re-projectingthe maps from the original Cassini to the present-dayTransverse Mercator was the next job and one which,like so many others, would have been a lot simplerwere the originals to have been rectangular ratherthan subtly different trapeziums. The variations inthe points of origin and, particularly for the OldSeries, occasional surveying errors made it impossibleto get an exact fit, no matter how many controlpoints were used. For this reason, the alignment ofthe map and the National Grid has more potential forerror than for the other series OS produced,although for the basic purpose of identifying alocation across several different time periods,including the present day, it is more than adequate.Certainly no one else had ever attempted the task.“Looking back on how long it took us,” Andersonstates, “I’m not surprised. Indeed, several peopletold us it couldn’t be done at all.”

This feature was put to the test in the first productsderived from these mapping layers, Cassini’s Old Seriesmaps which matched all 123 OS Landrangers ofEngland & Wales with the National Grid as a cyanoverlay. Sourcing suitable contemporary images for thecovers was another task that took longer than expectedbut by early 2007 the full series had been published.Attention then switched to the Popular Edition mapsfrom the 1920s, then to the Revised New Series fromthe turn of the century.

At this stage, Cassini began to get enquiries froma wide range of companies – could the mapping belicensed? The answer, Cassini soon decided, was“yes.” So, if you visit a genealogy website or read aparish magazine, if you buy a gift or respond to anewspaper promotion, if you work in localgovernment or in a school, if you use a hand-held

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Trevithick,Stephenson,

Brunel and theother steam-

powerrevolutionarieswere about topose OrdnanceSurvey (and,

later, Cassini) aproblem.

“

“

GPS system or an iPhone – if any of these apply andin doing so you encounter one-inch historical OSmaps the chances are they’ve been supplied by orlicensed from Cassini.

A steamroller through the maps We must nowbriefly jump back to the early 19th century to whenRichard Trevithick was tinkering with his latest inventionin Redruth. Trevithick, Stephenson, Brunel and theother steam-power revolutionaries were about to poseOrdnance Survey (and, later, Cassini) a problem.

The railways were built at breakneck speed fromthe early 1830s, at the same time the surveyors weremapping the central part of the country. Allcartographers know that their work will needupdating eventually: but it must have been gallingfor OS to see that, within a few years, a dramaticnew feature had been added to the landscape thatmade their maps as they stood almost useless.

The pragmatic, if inelegant, solution OS adoptedwas to engrave the railways over the existing platesand re-print. Due to technological constraints this wasdone without changing other features including –irritatingly for future researchers – the publicationdate. Many versions of the Old Series maps (mainly inthe Midlands) were thus originally from one specifiedyear, yet clearly include a railway that was built, andover-engraved, later. If one sheet had had railwaysadded and its neighbour hadn’t, when joined togetherthe tracks appeared suddenly to stop, as if the navvieshad packed up for the weekend and decided not tocome back. In the mid-19th century OS briefly tried topre-empt this by including projected railways whichhad received parliamentary approval. This sometimesbackfired, for the railway-building boom was endingand many of these routes were never built.

When work on the Old Series started there wereno railways: when it finished 70 years later therewere over 15,000 miles of them. No combination oforiginal sheets, with or without engraved additions(even assuming ideal ones could be found), couldhave displayed this transformation with anyaccuracy. We were left, once again, with eithercharming imperfections or anachronistic blemishes,depending on your point of view. As with so many ofthe technical aspects, this problem solved itself withthe later series. Here, such features were extant fromthe outset while revisions and publication wereconducted over shorter time spans so minimising theeditorial differences between adjoining sheets.

Site centering Having created these Landranger-matching maps it soon became clear that there wereother ways in which the source cartography could bedeployed. Site-centred present-day maps were bynow widely available. Having created several seriesof geo-referenced tiles, Cassini was well-placed tooffer historical maps in the same way.

The new challenge was then to create a series of

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systems which could handle all the aspects ofpersonalised map creation. “There wasn’t then, andisn’t now, one piece of software to do all thenecessary tasks,” Cassini’s technical director PhilipJohnson explains. Search options such as postcodesand place names required sourcing and editinggazetteers. A system had to be created to crop themaps to pre-defined sizes. It needed to be able toadd metadata such as the National Grid andadministrative boundaries to the maps and insertpersonalised inscriptions and dynamic dates beneaththem. For scale-variations of the one-inch maps, thedata had to be auto-interpolated during thegeneration of the output files. Everything had to beaccessed and viewed in thumbnail by on-linecustomers. Finally, the results needed to be providedthrough a range of delivery systems supplyingspecialist fulfillers, the website’s shopping basketand licensee interfaces such as Cassini’s API andMapmaker-Plus portals. “Moreover,” Johnsonconcludes, “each stage has to be carefully linked andequally carefully tested whenever we update thesoftware or add new products. And they all have towork together, immediately, 24 hours a day, sevendays a week – which they do.”

Indeed, this constant process of re-evaluationand enhancement extends to all aspects of thebusiness. More British series and products are beingadded and work is already underway on creatingsimilar geo-referenced and geo-rectified tiles ofhistorical maps of western and central Europe. Moreprojects await. James Anderson sums up the journeyso far: “We’ve learned many lessons the hard wayand have gained more knowledge and expertise thanwe ever expected. In the process we’ve also createdunique datasets, a wide range of products andseveral bespoke delivery systems. We can now applyall this experience in the marketplace as a leadingprovider of historical GIS consultancy and geo-temporal data mashups.”

All text & illustrations ©Cassini Publishing Ltd.

• For more information on Cassini’s range ofmapping products, datasets and GIS services, pleasecontact [email protected] or visitwww.cassinimaps.com

About the authorBrian Quinn read History atQueens’ College Cambridgeand has been involved inpublishing for most of hisworking life. He was one ofthe founding directors ofCassini and has since beenclosely involved with allaspects of the company’sgrowth and development.





Spatial DataInfrastuctures. . .

are potentialgame-changers

fordevelopment.

“

“

CHANGES IN TECHNOLOGY can contribute to bettergovernance of land tenure by making servicesaccessible, accountable, affordable, effective,efficient, equitable and transparent, and by limitingopportunities for corrupt practices.

The World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture

Organisation (FAO) have been at the forefront ofassisting countries from the Europe and Central Asia(ECA) region with land reform over the past fifteenyears. Twenty three countries have been lent overUS$1.6 billion in loan or credit funds from the Bank toaugment government programmes and assistancefrom bilateral donors. The ECA region has seen agreater level of land and property redistribution than atany other time in history. Over half of the investmenthas been utilised for ICT system implementation.

The recent history In the late 1980’s theeconomies of the former Soviet Union and countriesof the socialist block (east of the “Iron Curtain”)collapsed and most countries of that regionunderwent a very traumatic and fundamentalchange. Nearly all of these countries began toencourage private ownership of land and theoperation of a real estate market. Houses andapartments were often given free of charge (or forminimal cost) to the occupants, large farms werebroken up and land plots distributed to theirworkers. State owned enterprises were privatized or

wound down. The establishment of propertyregistration systems were a fundamentalrequirement so that people could feel secure in theirownership, buy or lease property and use their assetsas collateral for loans.

A very rapid improvement In the year 2000,Hernando de Soto wrote about these ‘transition’countries in his book, The Mystery of Capital,comparing them with the developing countries bystating: “… today they look astonishingly similar:strong underground economies, glaring inequality,pervasive mafias, political instability, capital flightand flagrant disregard for law. … most peoplecannot participate in an expanded market becausethey do not have access to a legal property rightssystem that represents their assets in a manner thatmakes them widely transferable and fungible, …”

We believe that we have helped to meet thischallenge and that de Soto’s statement is no longer true!

In 2014. . .The World Bank’s Doing Business reportfor 2014 shows 11 of the top 20 most businessfriendly countries for registering property are from thisregion. It is an incredible turn around in less than 15years. The report ranks the Russian Federation,

Macedonia, Kosovo and Ukraine among the top teneconomies that improved most in 2012/13 in all areastracked by Doing Business, and that technology hasmade a large contribution to this progress.

Innovative technology applied to land recordsand spatial datasets improves knowledge-baseddecision making and widens means for datadissemination and access to land records. E-governance in spatial data management is an area ofrapid innovation in developed economies, andemerging economies can leap-frog those with longerestablished systems. Spatial Data Infrastuctures(SDIs) are potential game-changers for development.They enable governments to integrate planning,taxation, disaster risk management and climatechange monitoring, mitigation and adaptation innew ways with great savings in time and funds, whileimproving overall service and governance.

The development and implementation of ITsystems for land administration need strong supportand project management skills. World Bankexperience in the ECA region has shown that home-grown IT systems have been more successfully

Land Reform: rapid change in former Eastern BlocWith political will and the aid of modern technology change can come quickly to land

administration systems. Gavin Adlington and Rumyana Tonchovska demonstrate howsecure property rights in Eastern Europe and Central Asia have evolved rapidly in the

former socialist states, creating the foundation for successful economies.

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World Bank land reform


In 1997 the registration agency in Kyrgyzstan had never used acomputer. In Moldova we found a few and some young menwho had used spreadsheets. Within a few years, both countrieshad developed internally sophisticated automated registrationsystems that have since developed into on-line nationwidesystems. In Kyrgyzstan they went from the situation of havingno mortgages (and no lending banks other than for agriculturalinputs) to a vibrant market lending over a US$1 billion per year.In Moldova, and several other countries, the mortgage marketgrew by double digit percentages annually.

In 2000 in Georgia a completely dysfunctional system for recordingproperty rights. At the market in Tblisi people would standwith a notice round their neck advertising apartments for saleand others sitting at makeshift tables would prepare thetransfer documents while cash was handed over. It wasextremely rare for anyone to register land because of endemiccorruption and inefficiencies. In 2014, Georgia is top of theworldwide Doing Business rankings for registration with anefficient, inexpensive and same day services on-line.


It holds recordsfor over 137million land

parcels and realestate units in

its databasewith over 253

millionregistered

titles. . .

“

“


implemented than larger internationally tenderedcontracts. The systems, from whatever source, mustbe piloted and tested in situ and require adequatetraining for the managers and operators before theyare rolled out across a country. Clearly the internetand use of the web are absolutely vital to successand particularly to public and professionalconfidence in land administration systems.

Despite recent developments in the Ukraine andother former Soviet Bloc countries, which could seepolitical boundary changes, land and property owners’records are secure. For instance, in Crimea the digitalrecords for areas that are currently under dispute aresafely stored and can be accessed and utilized oncethe situation is resolved. Owners themselves have theirpaper documents. Similarly, during riots in Kyrgyzstanbetween groups of ethnic Uzbeks and Kyrgyz in thesouthern Kyrgyzstan city of Osh in June 2010, recordsdestroyed at a local office were quickly replaced fromthe digital versions held in the capital. Serbia andKosovo are another example. The EU is financing aproject in Serbia for scanning of all property records ofthe territory of Kosovo. Keeping a digital record inmore than one location is a good safeguard whenproblems occur locally.

Russian Federation RosReestr is one of the largestproperty registration agencies on earth with around72,000 employees in over 5,000 offices. It wasestablished in 2009 from three existing agencies. Itholds records for over 137 million land parcels andreal estate units in its database with over 253 millionregistered titles and restrictions (encumbrances).About 50 million applications are processed per yearand 450,000 applications are received daily.

Online transactions have risen from zero to 34percent by November 2013. Clients can now go onlineto get electronically signed extracts (a critical documentfor sale or mortgage) for any registered property in theentire territory of the Russian Federation as well as theservice from any local office. Obtaining such an extractpreviously required several business days and at leasttwo trips in person to an office. Now anyone maysubscribe online to track changes in status of theirproperty. Since July 1, 2012 Rosreestr has beenexchanging information in digital form with 40government, regional and municipal authorities andcitizens are no longer required to submit documentsissued by government or municipal institutions. Clientsare no longer obliged to bring physical documentsissued by government and municipal offices.

Since the beginning of 2013 all incomingdocuments to Rosreestr are scanned and there are, bylaw, no longer any paper applications. Massiveconversion of paper documents is planned for the nextfive years, which will speed up the application processand will contribute to the optimisation of the numberof staff and offices. The first such office has beenopened in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, and pilot testing has

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been completed. In one month the staff required toprocess applications from four oblasts (regions) werehalved including St. Petersburg, where citizens hadoften had to face very long queues! The official plan isto reduce the number of back offices to six regionalprocessing centres, and the number of archives from9000 locations to eight electronic centres by 2018.

The Russian Public Cadastral Map e-services arevery popular and widely used:

• over 15 million visits were recorded in 2013 (105%growth over 2012)

• over 3 million unique visits in 2013 (93% growthcompared to 2012)

• over 140 thousand applications with App Store andover 60 thousand applications for Android havebeen installed.

The 2014 Doing Business report, ranked Russia 31places up from the previous year – from 48th to 17thposition.

Ukraine From the beginning of 2013 Ukraineintroduced a National Cadastral System (NCS), whichhas an integrated database of more than 22 millionfiles and includes information about the properties,rights holders, digital cadastral maps, aerial andsatellite images. During its first year over 3 millionapplications were submitted and 1.25 million newland parcels registered. On average 5000 newparcels were registered per day (with a peak of 8,500on one day), and over 900,000 extracts issued – anincrease of over 300% compared to the previousyear. The average time for issuing extracts wentdown from several weeks to 18 minutes and forregistering a new parcel from several weeks, or evenmonths, to 28 minutes nationwide! Registrars areusing digital signatures to verify the accuracy of dataprior to uploading the information to the unifieddatabase, thus minimising fraud opportunities.

In 2012 the national spatial coordinate system inUkraine was still a state secret and as a result nearly1500 different local coordinate systems were used incadastre offices. In 2013 the Ukrainian UnifiedCadastre map (at over 600,000 sq kms, the largest inEurope) became the most popular state website in2013 with over 3.5 million visitors.

A new approach using crowd-sourcing is being



Above: the Young andcapable staff at theUkraine state landcadastre centre.



They had ayoung, well-

educatedworkforce and

very oftenstarted with aclean slate -

without olderlegacy systems

or professionals. . .

“

“introduced to improve data quality with the activeparticipation of many citizens. Individuals can reporterrors identified in their property records via the NCSpublic Geo-portal and during its first month ofoperation nearly 11,000 separate on-line errorcorrection request were registered. An example fromKiev shows that, of 88 errors reported online, 59were related to the wrong positioning of propertieson the map. A technical error in the transformationparameters was identified and the correction of onetechnical error led to the automatic correction ofrecords for 2000 properties affected by this mistake.This is an extremely powerful mechanism for fastidentification of errors.

During 2013 some 300,000 sheets ofcartographic materials and 24 million sheets of StateLand Acts were converted from paper to electronicform. The data was entered automatically, verified,and uploaded into the state land cadastre databasein just four months

The implementation of the NCS improvedperformance of individual staff and their offices;increased transparency; and minimised theopportunities for corrupt practices. It has openednew opportunities for improving land management,property tax policy, and operation of the real estatemarket. Ukraine is now building a national spatialdata infrastructure (NSDI) and the results of a pilotproject were presented at the 2014 World Bankconference on Land and Poverty.

The 2014 Doing Business Report, ranked Ukraine61 places up from the previous year – from 168 to 97with statistics based on 2012 data (prior to theintroduction of the NCS). The expectations are thatin 2015 the ranking will further improve.

Macedonia The successful implementation of thee-Cadastre system in Macedonia has introduced anew dimension in the delivery of e-services toprofessional clients such as lawyers, surveyors andlocal government, but most importantly of all, toindividual citizens. The procedures for registrationand processing transactions have been standardisedand simplified, resulting in significantly shorterprocessing times. Notaries can order and get officialdocuments from their own offices and clients nolonger have to visit the local cadastre offices.

Local government departments can also speedup their operation by using the on-line system andchanges in construction law now require that allbuilding permits must be registered in the cadastreto have any validity.

The overall effect of these changes is that citizensand companies now have much more trust in theproperty registration system. The public now has freeaccess to data for parcels, buildings and owners. Theprocessing of client applications can be monitored atany time, free of charge, and clients are automaticallyinformed when processes are completed.

Conclusion If there is the political will these majororganisational changes to land administrationsystems can be made very quickly. Today we have thetechnology with aerial and satellite imagery, satellitepositioning systems, computers and opencommunication systems, as well as the possibility ofcrowd-sourcing, that enable the very rapidestablishment of effective cadastral and registrationsystems. We also recognise that former socialistcountries have some big advantages over otherregions where such changes have not yet been sosuccessful. They had a young, well-educatedworkforce and very often started with a clean slate -without older legacy systems or professionals (e.g.surveyors and lawyers) with a vested interest inmaintaining the status quo.

About the authors

Gavin Adlington, a graduate of North East LondonPolytechnic, worked on systematic registration ofproperty rights in Malawi until from 1978 until 1992.He then consulted on land administration, focusingsince 1994 on the former socialist countries ofEastern Europe and Central Asia. Since 2005 he hasbeen with the World Bank and is now their LeadLand Administration Specialist supervising a teamimplementing projects and research work in 17countries. In 2013 he received the Michael BarrettAward from the Royal Institution of CharteredSurveyors and presented “Land Administration –Great Changes Can Happen Quickly” at theceremony in London.

Rumyana Tonchovska is a Senior LandAdministration Officer – IT at the Food andAgriculture Organization of the UN. She is a keyadvisor to the Bank ECA land team on the design,supervision and implementation of major IT systemsfor the land sector and building up Spatial DataInfrastructures. She is advising on how to make bestuse of available technologies and datasets. She iscurrently working with the Bank ECA land team onseveral innovation grants, aiming at building a localcapacity for evidence based policy making inAgricultural sector.

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In a major citycentre... thenumber ofbuildings

predicted to beimpacted by

HighestAstronomical

Tide conditionsby the year2090 is over

1800. . .

“

“

THE PACIFIC ISLANDS are among the countries mostvulnerable to climate change globally. Coastalcommunities, atoll islands, and the denselypopulated and low-lying deltaic regions on largerislands are particularly vulnerable to even smallchanges in climatic variables, especially rainfall andtropical storm patterns and sea level rise.

The Project The Australian Government fundedPacific-Australia Climate Change Science andAdaptation Planning (PACCSAP) programme is helpingPacific Island countries better understand and preparefor the potential impacts of climate change. ThePACCSAP LiDAR activities were designed at the requestof national governments and responded to the needfor accurate elevation data to underpin analysis of theimpact of sea level rise.

The Coastal Inundation and Risk component of thisproject began in March 2011, when the AustralianDepartment of the Environment conducted a technicalscoping mission to Tonga, Papua New Guinea (PNG)and Vanuatu. The mission identified LiDAR surveypriorities, and training and capacity building needs, toprovide a robust and accurate GIS environment tosupport strategic and operational decision making. Thismission was the first part of the overall project to assistPacific island communities improve their planning andmanagement strategies for coastal inundation alongparticularly vulnerable parts of their coastlines.

LiDAR surveys were then completed over fourPacific Island countries: the Tongan survey in late 2011;the Papua New Guinea survey in early 2012; and theVanuatu and Samoan surveys in late 2012. The specificsites for data collection were assessed against exposure

(population and assets) and alignment with prioritiesidentified in the country’s climate change plan or policy.LiDAR Modelling Whilst the current effects of sealevel rise on communities can be seen in areas of Tonga,Samoa, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, spatialmodelling and data availability is required to identifythe communities that will be most at risk in the future.By identifying these communities governments canactively plan for the effects of climate change and sealevel rise. For existing developments this can includestrategies for protecting, accommodating or retreatingassets and people, whilst for the future this modellingwill inform policies to identify areas that should beavoided, accommodated or accepted.

The Pacific Islands of Tonga, Samoa, Papua NewGuinea and Vanuatu all lacked elevation data with therequired resolution to perform small scale coastal riskanalysis to identify key communities at risk from sealevel rise. This programme provided a number of dataproducts derived from high-resolution LiDAR dataincluding 1-metre resolution Digital Elevation Modelsand Digital Surface Models as well as the raw LiDARpoint cloud data. Through the availability and use of

this data inundation modelling was performed.Inundation models were provided for Highest

Astronomical Tide, one in ten-year storm and one in100-year storm scenarios for 2030, 2055 and 2090.The information used for the modelling was providedthrough the Pacific Climate Change Science Programand the Australian Bureau of of Meteorology.

Results of Inundation Modelling The resultinginundation modelling provided an insight into thechallenges that Pacific Islands face in adapting toclimate change. In a small island, Vanuatu, over 400buildings are predicted to be impacted by HighestAstronomical Tide conditions by the year 2090; overtriple the number that are currently affected and over60% of the total number of residences.

In a major city centre of another Pacific Islandcountry the number of buildings predicted to beimpacted by Highest Astronomical Tide conditions bythe year 2090 is over 1800; a dramatic increase fromthe less than 30 buildings currently affected. Avillage on the Tonga island of Tongatapu is alreadyfacing the challenges of regular inundation with over90% of buildings in this community currentlyaffected by Highest Astronomical Tide conditions.

Many Pacific Island countries are implementing a

GIS aids Pacific Islands manage climate changeWhatever one’s views about climate change and its causes, there are few who deny that it’shappening. The frequency of extreme weather events seem to be increasing as predicted by

the scientists. While we in Britain have experienced increased flooding events many low-lyingPacific island communities face obliteration explains Nathan Eaton of NGIS Australia.

climate change: Pacific islands

Above: LiDARinundation modellingfor Tonga’s capitalNuku'alofa.

Too many aidprojects haveimplementedbest-of-breed

solutionswithout due

considerationfor the existing

environmentand capabilityto support and

utilise thesolution. . .

“

“


range of measures to mitigate the impacts of stormsurge and inundation including sea walls andmangroves. The inundation models for sea level riseprovided through this project will allow governmentministries to focus policies, planning and developmentfor climate change mitigation through the temporaltriggers achieved through localised coastal riskanalysis. Spatial data and analysis are imperative toeffective decision making for climate change.

Capacity Building component In early 2013,NGIS was engaged to develop each Pacific Islandnation’s capacity to manage and use the LiDAR andimagery data to support decision-making. A specificobjective was to support the ongoing sustainabilityof the data, software and hardware provided tothese countries as part of the programme. Thismeans that countries are only equipped withsoftware and hardware which can be adequatelymaintained by themselves post-implementation.

Too many aid projects have implemented best-of-breed solutions without due consideration for theexisting environment and capability to support andutilise the solution post implementation. NGIS and theCRCSI focused on providing fit-for-purpose capacitybuilding by using existing software preferences andinvestment from each Pacific island country, resulting ina largely software agnostic capacity buildingprogramme. Applications, including ArcGIS, MapInfo,Global Mapper and QGIS were all used throughout theprogramme with a clear focus on the capabilities of theLiDAR data provided and the resulting analysis andinterpretation that could be achieved.

Climate Change and The White House In Marchthis year the President of the United States of Americalaunched a Climate Change Initiative which is aimed atmaking climate relevant data freely available andaccessible. The purpose of making this data available is toimprove climate change preparedness and to ensure thatcommunities have the information and tools required toaccommodate climate change. As part of the pressrelease for this initiative the work that NGIS hascompleted in conjunction with the Australian Departmentof Environment and the Cooperative Research Council forSpatial Information was showcased as a leading globalexample for increasing climate change awareness byproviding data and tools using the Google platform.

This work has resulted in the release of the Vanuatu

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Globe which provides high resolution elevation andterrain data across Vanuatu that was surveyed anddelivered as part of this project along with inundationlayers for predicted sea level rise for 2030, 2055 and2090. The Vanuatu Globe is available from the VanuatuNational Advisory Board on Climate Change andDisaster Risk Reduction website (www.nab.vu).

Tonga, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Vanuatu areall leveraging the data and capacity building providedby this programme for climate change adaptation. Apicture paints a thousand words and people all over theworld understand maps. By using maps to show thepredicted extent of inundation resulting from sea levelrise communities can get a glimpse into the future andgovernments can implement effective policies toprotect these communities.

Links and referencesh t t p : / / w w w . w h i t e h o u s e . g o v / t h e - p r e s s -office/2014/03/19/fact-sheet-president-s-climate-data-initiative-empowering-america-s-commhttp://www.crcsi.com.au/News/Australian-Expertise-Valued

ABC Radiofile:///P:/Training_Support/CRC014_PacificIslands/Project%20Communications/Press/Pacific%20Beat%20ABC%20Radio%20Australia.htm

Geo Community Spatial Newsfile:///P:/Training_Support/CRC014_PacificIslands/Project%20Communications/Press/GeoCommunity%20SpatialNews.html

The Office of the Governor General of Australiahttp://www.gg.gov.au/events/governor-general-met-prime-minister-papua-new-guinea-hon-peter-oneill-mp-port-moresby

ABC Newshttp://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-04-22/an-aus-govenor-general-in-png/4644090?section=australianetworknews

Samoa Observerhttp : / /www.samoaobserver.ws/other/c l imate-change/6081-data-to-help-samoa-for-sea-level-rise

IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)According to the 5th Assessment, IPCC report, Overthe last century global average sea level rose by 1.7[1.5 to 1.9] mm per year, in recent years (between1993 and 2010) this rate has increased to 3.2 [2.8 to3.6] mm per year. The IPCC report finds that the rateof sea level rise over the last century is unusually highin the context of the last 2,000 years.


“Climate change is a fact. And when our children’s childrenlook us in the eye and ask if we did all we could to leave thema safer, more stable world, with new sources of energy, I wantus to be able to say yes, we did.” President Barack Obama,State of the Union Address, January 28, 2014


climate change: Pacific islands

Above: in a major citycentre of a Pacific Islandcountry the number ofbuildings predicted to beimpacted by HighestAstronomical Tideconditions by the year2090 are over 1800 – adramatic increase fromthe less than 30 buildingscurrently affected.


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There is more news of products and services on our website at www.location-source.comTo get your company featured on this page call Sharon Robson on +44 (0)1438 352617


products

Update for global productsEuropa Technologies hasannounced a major upgrade to itsdigital product for the insuranceand reinsurance sectors. GlobalCRESTA Plus is a comprehensiveimplementation of the latestspecification and is available inhigh and low resolution versions.

CRESTA (Catastrophe RiskEvaluating and StandardisingTarget Accumulations) is aninsurance industry standard thathelps brokers and reinsurersassess and present risk based on azoning system established bysome of the world’s leadingreinsurers. Global CRESTA Plus isbased on the company’s globaldata, as featured in Google Earthand Google Maps. Additionally,the product utilises postal andadministrative boundary datafrom Michael Bauer International.

There are generous referencemap layers including a placesgazetteer of over 930,000locations. The gazetteer includessupport for 19 languages.Company director and founderWarren Vick said: “GlobalCRESTA Plus continues to be animportant element of our worlddata portfolio. I am delighted thatthis latest version continues tooffer tremendous quality andvalue to the insurance sector.”

The company has also

released the 2014 versions of itsdigital global map data productsGlobal Insight, Global InsightPlus, Global Discovery, GlobalElements and Global 360. It isclaimed to be ‘the most up-to-date digital map of the world’and includes many political andadministrative changes includingthe gazetteer mentioned above.Designed to be “glocal”, the datasuite is ideal for internationalorganisations that require astandard product with extensivesupport for localisation.http://www.europa.uk.com/globalmaps.

Solutions market for OSOrdnance Survey’s newGeoIntelligence team has beenset up to deliver bespokesolutions and consulting services

built around location data. Thesesolutions and services are aimedat unlocking the power oflocation to improve performanceand provide a return on invest -ment to customers. Theannouncement of this develop -ment, which came as a blog postrather than a press release,continues: ‘For many yearsOrdnance Survey has deliveredlocation data to expert users –but we are increasingly seeing ademand for complete solutionswhich directly address customers’challenges. In response to this,our GeoIntelligence team is nowdelivering business solutionssupported by the strengths,resources and expertise ofOrdnance Survey.’

The team’s first white paper, Abetter place for smarter business,explores how businesses can takefull advantage of the locationdimension within their data.

Location is a crucial compo -nent of data with three-quartersof all datasets containing somekind of location reference.Business operations andchallenges can be viewed fromthe perspective of place, time,people, products and movement.For many organisations, ‘Place’remains the missing piece of theinformation jigsaw. More precise,accurate and reliable locationdata can help deliver bettercustomer insights, improved assetand supply chain efficiencies, andbetter risk management.

Digital marine mappingfor ScotlandOceanWise has been awarded aframework contract to supplymarine mapping data to theScottish Government, makingthem the supplier of choice to allUK government organisationsrequiring marine data for use indesktop and web GIS.

The framework covers deliveryand maintenance of raster chartsand Marine Themes, including ahigh resolution seabed digitalelevation model. The data will bedelivered as OGC compliant webservices via partner and distributorFIND Mapping Ltd, as well as infile-based open and proprietaryformats.

Marine Themes is as close aspossible to a seamless definitivemarine base map, resolvingfragmented geometry acrosschart edges, tracking multiplelinks back to source data andreplacing chart data with authori -tative source datasets, such asTraffic Separation Schemes andParticular Sensitive Sea Areassupplied under license from theInternational MaritimeOrganisation. The aim is to makemarine data as widely accessibleas possible to all public sectorbodies including local authoritiesand emergency services in asimilar way to the Public SectorMapping Agreements.

BRIEFSSpectra Precision has introducedthe MobileMapper 20, a GIShandheld with a new bright VGAcolour touch-screen display, a 5-Mpx camera, doubled memorycapacity, wifi, upto 20-hour batterlife and 3.5G cellular performance.MobileMapper 20 provides real-time GPS accuracy of better than 2metres and post-processedaccuracy of a half metre usingMobileMapper Office software.Mapping professionals can alsotake advantage of an optionalField software for data collection,maintenance and inspection.

Update forLeica’s Zeno

datacollector

Leica Geosystems has released the next generation of its 7” tabletcomputer for GIS data collection. The Zeno CS25 plus and CS25 GNSSplus offer more storage capacity, a higher resolution camera and fastercommunication capabilities. The CS25 plus weighs 1.3 kgs a 5-Mpxcamera with better image resolution, MIL-STD 810G military standardsfor withstanding humidity, vibrations, drops and extremetemperatures and with an IP65 rating, keeps dust and water.

Geo-intelligence:how OS sees

the market.

calendarIssue No 58 June 2014

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| seminars | conferences | exhibitions | courses | events | workshops | symposiums |We welcome advance details of conferences, seminars, exhibitions and other events which are likely to be of interest to the GIScommunity. Please mention the name of the event, venue, date and point of contact for further information and send to Hayley Tear,GISPro, 2B North Road, Stevenage, Herts SG1 4AT or e-mail: [email protected].

Esri UK annual conference11 June, QEII Conference Centre, Weestminster, London W1, UKMore information:www.esriuk.com/conference 2014

FIG Congress 201416-21 June, Kuala Lumpur, MalaysiaMore information:www.fig.net/fig2014

AGI Northern Ireland Showcase10 October, Riddel Hall, 185 Stranmillis Rd, Belfast, BT9 5EE, UK.More information:www.agi.org.uk/events

British Cartographic Society Annual Symposium 201424-26 June, Marwell Hotel, Winchester, UKMore information:www.cartography.org.uk

Geo: The Big 5 – Big Data30 September, London, UK.More information:http://www.geobig5.com/events/big-data/

Geo: The Big 5 – Policy9 October, Cardiff, UK More information:http://www.geobig5.com/events/policy/

GeoCom: ‘The Changing Face of Geo11-13 November, Chesford Grange, nr WarwickIncluding: AGI Awards for Geospatial Excellence (13 November)More information:http://www.geobig5.com/events/geocom-big-5/

SEPTEMBERJUNE

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

S O F T W A R E

E D U C AT I O N

DISTANCE LEARNING GIS PROGRAMMES

MSc/PgDip/PgCertcourses in GIS bydistance learningJointly delivered by ManchesterMetropolitan University and theUniversity of Salford

New Masters in• GIS• Applied GIS• GI Technologies

Designed to meet the needs of GIS professionals and those newto the industry.

See our website for further details:www.unigis.org

+44 (0)161 247 [email protected]

Educating tomorrow’s GIS professionals

D I G I TA L M A P P I N G

ClassifiedIssue No 58 June 2014

www.gisprofessional.co.ukjoining the geography jigsaw

GiS

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3 D S O L U T I O N S

To reserve space in the next issue call Sharon Robson on +44 (0)1438 352617 by 24 July

DATA CAPTURE

SPATIAL INFORMATIONTECHNOLOGIES

G I S P R O R E C R U I T M E N T

Thousands of public servants in Central and local government, NHS® organisations, emergency services, parish, town and community councils across England and Wales are already benefiting from the Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA). Together they have already identified tens of millions of pounds worth of efficiencies and savings supported by the use of PSMA data.

Nearly 3,400 organisations already have joined the PSMA, and this is still growing fast. More public sector organisations than ever are using geographic data for the first time, converting their information and data into intelligence, to deliver informed decisions, better public services and improved efficiencies.

Visit www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/psma to see how they are benefiting from the agreement.

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pangeo: europe’s geo hazards online - gis professional · 2019-02-01 · efﬁcient feature &...

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