Aligned Assets are helping BTP with Enquiries

14 February 2008, 9:20am

Who says that size does not matter? Eight Terabytes of base mapping, aerial imagery together with over 100 million names and addresses is now available to the British Transport Police (BTP) to help with their enquiries.

In order to fulfil the operational responsibilities of the BTP, Aligned Assets, in partnership with Spatial Technology AB of Sweden (www.spatialtech.se), have just completed the first phase of the integrated Spatial Database combined with a sub-second nationwide name and address search capability.

Divided into seven geographical areas, the BTP comprises over 4,000 staff covering 10,000 miles of track, more than 3,000 railway stations and depots.

This vast responsibility requires one centrally managed Geographical Information System (GIS) solution to support BTP’s GIS vision and the effective use and sharing of mission critical information.

This pioneering model provided by Aligned Assets ensures that all systems can now be integrated with common, centrally maintained and controlled spatial data held in an Oracle database, which is managed by ISM from Spatial Technology. This enables full use of OS MasterMap, high resolution aerial imagery from GetMapping and other operational map layers by staff throughout the organisation, irrespective of their physical location. Web delivery, using both WMS and WFS, is a key to such a widespread use of the data and costs are controlled by using open source technologies.

The model also provides a web application, Single Point Search, which is fully integrated gazetteer solution with sub-second query response based upon the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) together with the Name Trace Pro product supplied by QAS as well as other addressable and non-addressable gazetteer databases currently in use at BTP.

Said Andrew Watson, Chief Information Officer at British Transport Police:

“Aligned Assets have provided the spatial and address foundation for BTP; we will now be integrating it with our other systems to greatly enhance our capabilities at the same time as reducing our operational costs. A Win, Win situation for all involved”.

This is the first major use of the NLPG by the emergency services in the U.K. It will be a prime example of the open solutions benefits which would bring the best of breed integrated working and provide the paramount solution for the customer.

www.aligned-assets.co.uk

GeoConnexion UK