1Spatial streamlines LGBC review

17 September 2008, 11:40am

17th September 2008, Cambridge, UK. 1Spatial technology has helped the Local Government Boundaries Commissioner (LGBC) for Northern Ireland to cut the boundary definition time of its current review of all Local Government boundaries in Northern Ireland. The purpose of the review was to provide for the establishment of 11 local government districts in Northern Ireland and for the division of the districts into wards.

The system was originally developed for the Parliamentary Boundary Commission and was re-used by LGBC with some additional enhancements. The re-use of the system means that the cost savings are significant since the development time for the LGBC current system was reduced.

The system uses 1Spatial's technology to geo-code the 1.2 million records from the electoral roll, using Pointer® (the standard address database for Northern Ireland). 1Spatial's system was able to automatically match 95% of these records and the remaining 60,000 records were geo-coded using a 1Spatial interactive tool. The entire process was completed within 3 weeks, delivering significant time-savings to LGBC.

The resulting electoral data was used in conjunction with boundary data, all stored in an Oracle spatial database, with the electoral data being used to automatically calculate the electoral numbers for each ward.

The system is based on an Oracle spatial database, and uses 1Spatial's Radius Vision product to view Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI) mapping data (large-scale vector, ortho photography and small-scale raster) to create ward/local government district polygons. It then generates map plots that will be used to publish the provisional recommendations from the review, which will be distributed at the launch on the 17th September 2008.

Thanks to 1Spatial, the production of provisional recommendations by the Local Government Boundaries review team have been completed in only 6 weeks.

Enda McAtamney, Boundaries Manager, Land and Property Services (LPS)*, commented:

'This project has shown the value of the mapping data collected by LPS. This digital data together with 1Spatial software has enabled the project to be completed significantly faster and with much fewer resources than when the review was last undertaken.'

Séamus Gilroy, Managing Director of 1Spatial Ireland, commented:

'We are delighted to see the automation and productivity levels achieved in the Local Government Boundaries Review using 1Spatial technology with OSNI mapping and the Pointer address database.'

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