With millions of pounds of public money being spent on civil assets every year, it is the role of the Strategic Investment Board (SIB) to keep citizens and industry informed about current and planned projects. To assist it in this mission, SIB has launched a new on-line Strategic Investment Portal incorporating ArcGIS at www.isni.gov.uk.
Unique in many respects, this interactive solution points the way ahead for governments around the world.
Strategic Investment Board Case Study
Introduction
Across Northern Ireland, schools and colleges are being modernised, a new water and waste water infrastructure is being delivered, roads are being improved and much more besides. So much so that ESRI’s Gov 2.0 web site now features the SIB Investment Portal site on their home page. See http://www.esri.com/industries/gov20/mapping-applications.html
The Client
The Strategic Investment Board(SIB) supports the Northern Ireland Executive and government departments in delivering the investment strategy for Northern Ireland. Owned by the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister (OFMDFM), the organisation provides strategic advice on the co-ordination, financing and procurement of major capital projects across the region, with the singular aim of accelerating delivery and securing value for the public purse.
The Challenge
One of the SIB’s biggest challenges was to find a way to communicate government plans to all of the various stakeholders, as well as the general public. “It is important in these more challenging economic times that the government can communicate the positive things that are happening”, says Martin Spollen, Strategic Adviser at SIB. There is a lot of change and tangible investment going across the region. We wanted to find a way to help the Executive to communicate this to a diverse stakeholder base”
Solution
To address this challenge, SIB decided to develop an on-line information portal to provide private sector contractors and the general public with visibility of all current and planned capital investment in Northern Ireland.
Benefits
“The solution is an outstanding example of how GIS can be used to really drive forwards people’s understanding of what is happening across a large and diverse landscape in different timescales, with different bodies”, believes Spollen.
Technology Used
The entire project took less than six months to complete, with most of this time being devoted to the development of the back end systems. “The deployment of ArcGIS as part of the total solution was very straightforward” recalls Spollen.
Urban and Regional Planning
Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County is located between the outer suburbs of Dublin City and the Dublin/Wicklow Mountains on the East Coast of Ireland. Its population is approximately 190,000 people. Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council approached ESRI Ireland in 2008 to discuss their requirements to prepare and publish the County Development Plan 2010 -2016.
Dun Laoghaire Rathdown and Fingal County Councils Joint Case Study
Introduction
Each County and City Council is obliged to produce a Development Plan every five years which sets out an overall strategy for how development is planned. An important aspect in the production of these plans is the three opportunities that are provided for Public Consultations.
Client
Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County is located between the outer suburbs of Dublin City and the Dublin/Wicklow Mountains on the East Coast of Ireland. Its population is approximately 190,000 people. Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council approached ESRI Ireland in 2008 to discuss their requirements to prepare and publish the County Development Plan 2010 -2016.
The Challenge
The Council had prepared the Maps for previous Development Plans using a CAD system from which they had produced printed hardcopy map documents. The Council had recognised that the new development Plan would need to be an Internet ready product which would lend itself to display and interrogation on the Council’s internet site. Because an interactive map is essentially scale free the Council wished to ensure that their zoning geometry corresponded exactly with OSi geometry such that at high levels of zoom there were no discrepancies between the two.
The Solution
The Council also came to market for an internet based Development Plan Viewer. The viewer was to enable the Council publish the Development Plan on the internet for public scrutiny and response during the Public consultation phase. ESRI Ireland was selected to build the Development Plan Viewer using ArcGIS Server and later to build an associated eConsultation system which enabled members of the Public to submit responses to the Development Plan online. The same system was later adopted by Fingal County Council who joined the project as a joint stakeholder with Dun Laoghaire Rathdown.
The Benefits
During the preparation process major efficiency benefits were gained from the use of ArcGIS compared to the previous CAD system, the resultant product is also of a higher quality in terms of precision and cartography. The Council have now completed the capture of the new (Draft) Development Plan 2010 – 2016 and published it using the Development Plan Viewer on the Council internet site. During the 10-week public consultation period 18th April to 3rd July 2009 the Council received over 1900 submissions, 178 of which were received online through the eConsultation system.
The Technology Used
The Council also required a system that was based on a continuous seamless database rather than on drawing files so that multiple Drawing Office personnel could perform edits at the same time. This is not possible with a file based system and can be a major hindrance to efficiency. The Council selected ArcGIS as the platform on which to prepare the Development Plan. ESRI Ireland consultants then worked closely with the Council to design and implement a Geodatabase to hold all the features of interest to the Development Plan process along with their attributes.
This Geodatabase formed the cornerstone of all further work as it was essentially the template for the Development Plan. On top of this template ESRI Ireland set up ArcGIS project documents within which the Draughtsman could work and a multi-user versioned database which ensured their edits did not conflict with each other. With this infrastructure established the Council proceeded to capture the new geometry and attribution for their Development Plan.
Urban and Regional Planning
ESRI Ireland & Cora Systems Aid Tyne & Wear in Transport Planning:
Together with Cora Systems, ESRI Ireland designed and developed PV Spatial, an integrated mapping component to help Tyne & Wear view their transport planning projects “geographically”.
Cora Systems Social Urban & Regional Planning
Introduction
Together with Cora Systems, ESRI Ireland designed and developed PV Spatial, an integrated mapping component to help Tyne & Wear view their transport planning projects “geographically”. This enables them to manage their work coherently, share project information, scheduling tasks and making updates across several geographical areas.
Client
The Tyne and Wear is a metropolitan county in the North East of England. The Tyne & Wear Local Transport Plan (LTP) is a five year statutory document prepared by all local authorities which set out a strategy for the development of transport in a particular area. This plan indicates how money is made available in a plan area depending upon the quality of its Local Transport Plan.
The Challenge
The main problem with the Local Transport Plan was summarised as “getting the right information, at the right time in the right format”. The key difficulties with five Local Authorities working together on one Program included lack of project visibility and getting information from each local authority for reports.
The Solution
PV Spatial by Cora and ESRI Ireland enables Project Managers, Project Teams and IT Managers at Newcastle Upon Tyne to spatially manager their work coherently, sharing project information, scheduling tasks and making updates across several geographic areas.
The Benefits
Gary Mac Donald, Tyne and Wear LTP Core Team Manager “The Importance of having knowledge of various hierarchical levels of any project or group of projects cannot be underestimated. This coupled with the Geographic Information Systems mapping element, had made this application an indispensable tool to us in current and future planning initiatives”.
The Technology Used
Together with Cora Systems, ESRI Ireland designed and developed Project Vision (PV) Spatial, an integrated mapping component based on ESRI’s ArcIMS product. This seamlessly sits within the Project Vision application and is a scalable Internet Map Server and it is widely used for GIS Web Publishing to deliver maps, data and metadata to many users on the Web.
ArcGIS
ArcGIS is also increasingly being used in the Development Control function of Local Authorities to ensure that proposed developments adhere to the stipulations of the Development Plan as well as to precedence and best practice. In some Local Authorities ArcGIS is used to maintain a digital Register of submitted Planning Applications. In Northern Ireland these Planning Applications can be submitted online using ArcGIS. Once captured, incoming applications can then be spatially compared to the Development Plan Geodatabase to determine constraints during the approval process. They can also be published in interactive map form on the internet for query by the Public.
A number of ESRI Irelands clients are using ArcGIS to prepare and publish Development Plans and Planning Register’s.