As the number of births in the Republic of Ireland continues to rise, the Department of Education and Science faces a major challenge.
Introduction
As the number of births in the Republic of Ireland continues to rise, the Department of Education and Science faces a major challenge. It needs to provide more places at more schools to accommodate a ten percent increase in school-aged children – but in which regions of Ireland and in which schools are the places needed? ArcGIS is helping to provide the answers to these questions.
Client
The Department of Education & Science is a Public Sector Government Department. Its headquarters is located in Dublin with substantial offices in Tullamore and Athlone. It services the Irish school going population at all levels. The Planning and Building Unit within the Department for Education and Science is responsible for providing the necessary education infrastructure to support the delivery of quality education at all levels. The Department must identify, quantify and prioritise the demand for educational provision in order to deliver cost-effective, high quality accommodation which is optimised to meet that demand.
Challenge
The number of births in 2008 set a 113 year record (the highest birth rate since 1896, totalling 75,065 births). Enrolments at primary schools have been increasing since 2001/02 and are projected to continue increasing. Understandably, this prediction presents a major challenge for the Department of Education and Science (DES) as it needs to plan ahead for future demographic growth and understand where additional school places will be required.
Solution
ArcGIS has greatly improved the capacity of the Department to identify the location and quantity of new school accommodation needed to cater for population changes and to better inform the decision making processes for the school building programme. It has also improved the ability of the Building Unit to produce reports in answer to Ministerial and public queries.
Benefits
“During the installation of GIS ESRI Ireland provided excellent back up to us and we found that the training and knowledge transfer phase of the process were excellent in that thereafter we had the skills to operate the system ourselves. This was an essential element in that we need to be able to run demographic scenarios based on changing base data” commented Richard Dolan, Assistant Principal Officer, Department of Education & Science, “…..due to the success of the initial project with ESRI Ireland we have recently taken a decision to commission a Web GIS solution for the dissemination of GI data throughout the whole department”.
Technology used
Working with ESRI Ireland the Planning and Building Unit has built an ArcGIS Based system which helps them optimise the provision of school accommodation relative to demand at a given location. The system is used map existing school locations against CENSUS variables which indicate demand in order to ascertain where potential gaps in current provision may arise. The Building Unit can then formulate scenarios for filling gaps in demand using new school locations or additional capacity at existing locations. Alternative scenarios can then be assessed by using ArcGIS Network Analyst to calculate school catchments using drive time and distance maximise the assignment of demand to each location, where the likelihood of assignment decreases linearly with distance.
The Strategic Investment Board, Northern Ireland
Strategic Investment Board Limited (SIB) supports the Northern Ireland Executive and Government Departments in delivering the Investment Strategy for Northern Ireland (ISNI). This includes new schools, hospitals and roads.
Introduction
Strategic Investment Board Limited (SIB) supports the Northern Ireland Executive and Government Departments in delivering the Investment Strategy for Northern Ireland (ISNI). This includes new schools, hospitals and roads. It also means improved water facilities, communications and public transport. Better infrastructure provides a platform to help grow the economy, create social cohesion, enhance the environment and deliver better public services. Building relationships with stakeholders across the public, private, voluntary and community sectors is crucial in managing the ongoing transformation of Northern Ireland.
The Client
The role of the Strategic Investment Board of Northern Ireland is to “provide advice to Ministers in relation to the formulation and implementation of its programme of major capital investment projects.” Resolution of the location – allocation problem is often fundamental to this advice they need for the basis of their advice to Government.
Challenge
The Board recently used ArcGIS to advise on a strategy to optimize the provision of ambulance service Northern Ireland where there is a target of 75% for ambulances responding to category ‘A’ emergency calls within eight minutes. This is an example of the Maximal Covering Location Problem that can be computed using ArcGIS.
Solution
Prior to the analysis the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service (NIAS) were achieving a rate of 55% with 60 ambulances located at 30 stations across Northern Ireland. The Strategic Investment Board worked with the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety (DHSS&PS) and NIAS to see if they could reduce the time taken for an ambulance to get to a call out.
Benefits
By positioning ambulances at dynamic locations throughout the day it was calculated that 70% of category A calls could be reached in 8 minutes without any extra resources. Further refinement with minimal additional investment will bring this up to 74%. Work has now commenced on implementing the new performance Ambulance Service Model to target services where they are most needed.
Technology Used.
Using ArcGIS Spatial Analyst and statistical software analysis was undertaken using road network data, information on response times, resources, census data, incident rates and hospital locations to calculate optimal positioning of ambulance deployment locations.
Department of Education & Science
ArcGIS
Working with ESRI Ireland the Planning and Building Unit of the Department of Education & Science has built an ArcGIS Based system which helps them optimise the provision of school accommodation relative to demand at a given location. The system is used map existing school locations against CENSUS variables which indicate demand in order to ascertain where potential gaps in current provision may arise.
The Building Unit can then formulate scenarios for filling gaps in demand using new school locations or additional capacity at existing locations. Alternative scenarios can then be assessed by using ArcGIS Network Analyst to calculate school catchments using drive time and distance maximise the assignment of demand to each location, where the likelihood of assignment decreases linearly with distance.
Strategic Investment Board
ArcGIS Spatial Analyst
The Board recently used ArcGIS to advise on a strategy to optimize the provision of ambulance service Northern Ireland where there is a target of 75% for ambulances responding to category ‘A’ emergency calls within eight minutes. This is an example of the Maximal Covering Location Problem that can be computed using ArcGIS.
Using ArcGIS Spatial Analyst and statistical software analysis was undertaken using road network data, information on response times, resources, census data, incident rates and hospital locations to calculate optimal positioning of ambulance deployment locations.