GeODC completes mapping project for

16 January 2008, 6:37pm

GeODC completes mapping project for Havebury Housing Partnership

Data capture and conversion specialist GeODC
has completed a project to create up-to-date and accurate maps of social housing in West Suffolk. The project, to capture digital mapping of community areas, was undertaken on behalf of the Havebury Housing Partnership who own and manage nearly 6,000 properties in the St Edmundsbury area. GeODC transformed
paper plans into map accurate digital data for use in the organisations geographical information system (GIS) enabling them to review their grounds maintenance and street cleansing contract and improve the provision of services to residents.

The Havebury Housing Partnership is a large scale voluntary transfer registered social landlord who own and operate nearly 6,000 properties in the towns of Bury St Edmunds, Haverhill and surrounding villages. Formed in 2001 to take ownership of the housing stock of St Edmundsbury Borough Council Havebury
is a not for profit housing association dedicated to serving the existing and future housing needs of people living in West Suffolk and the Cambridge sub-region.

“At the time of transfer we entered into a service level agreement with the Council to continue the provision of grounds maintenance and street cleansing services,” said David Honeyball, Property Manager. “However it shortly became necessary to replace this agreement with a tendered contract. As the
Council had used the same workforce for many years, there were no accurate records of the service areas or specific works undertaken.”

In order to rectify this situation a team of Havebury personnel walked each neighbourhood armed with Ordnance Survey plans. Grasslands, shrub beds, woodland, hedges, ponds and other cleansing areas were annotated on the paper
plans and were then transferred to larger maps showing entire estates or grouped
properties. Each category of land / feature has a number of grades of work,
for example grass cutting may include weeding, edging work or the application
of fertilizer, and these specific standards and extents of work were also inc
luded on the paper maps.

GeODC initially scanned the paper plans in order to provide Havebury with a
simple digital representation of the original documents. However in order to
use the information within Havebury’s GIS each map was georeferenced, to
place it in its real world position, and individual features and associated
grades of work were captured. The resulting digital map layers were delivered to
Havebury on CD-ROM in a format compatible with their ArcView GIS.

“The completion of this project not only enabled the improved management of
the grounds maintenance and cleansing contract, we have subsequently been
able to provide more accurate calculations for the recharging of works to
residents,” continued Honeyball.

GeODC is a specialist data capture and conversion company providing a range
of services for the GIS and Local Government market. The company is a
partnership between Oxford Data Capture Ltd and Genesys International Corporation,
combining Oxford Data Capture’s reputation in providing flexible data capture,
conversion and consultancy projects in the UK with the global data
generation, manipulation, management and maintenance facilities of Genesys. GeODC have
more than 20 years experience delivering data solutions to both public and
private sector organisations.

www.geodc.co.uk

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