Hull City Council Win 2007 NLPG Exemplar Award....

02 November 2007, 8:15am

Hull City Council Win 2007 NLPG (National Land & Property Gazetteer) Exemplar Award with Emergency Management System built on eSpatial’s iSMART

eSpatial, a global enterprise geospatial software and technology company today announced that Hull City Council (HCC) has won the prestigious Exemplar Award for “NLPG – Most Creative Use”. The Award is for an Emergency Management system, using NLPG and NSG data, developed during recent heavy flooding in the city using eSpatial’s iSMART product.

The system is an extension to an existing iSMART based Interactive mapping application developed by HCC and eSpatial which enables HCC to publish share and manage geographic information internally over its intranet and externally over its website. As a timely demonstration of the value provided by the system, the application was extended (at under 48 hours notice) to include additional information to support Emergency Management activities during the heavy flooding. Information on ongoing flood management activities (e.g. flooded streets and flood barriers) was made immediately available across HCC.

The use of the NLPG and NSG in the flood response constituted an unusual project in so far as there was no agreed business case and planned schedule for these specific activities. Everything was done in hours or days, and was driven by necessity. The ability to rapidly link to a trusted data source with a number of different service areas illustrates the case for embedding the LLPG and LSG at the core of an authority’s business which is easily accessible. By using eSpatial’s technology, HCC supports & shares information from a single data store. This enables the roll out of applications based on eSpatial’s iSMART, such as the Emergency Management system using the NLPG, that add real value to both the internal processes and how local authorities deal with the general public. It would have been impossible to respond to the floods as HCC did without its existing infrastructure built around the LLPG using iSMART.

Orla Power, Head of Marketing, eSpatial said, “We’re delighted that Hull City Council has won this Award based on a system that uses eSpatial’s ISMART. This is a great example of how this type of technology can provide access to operational data such as the NLPG to support city wide spatial based decision support in a controlled and cost effective manner, this is particularly important for emergency management as was the case with HCC.”

Richard Liversedge, Head of ICT & e-Government, Hull City Council commented, “The flexibility of eSpatial’s iSMART enabled us to quickly extend the application to upload and share critical location information during the crisis. This greatly eased pressures in the incident room as there was a continuous live feed of information shared over the intranet which geographically displayed incidents. Using the NLPG, we shared critical geographic information such as flooded or blocked streets with the public instantly over our website.”

Steve Brandwood, GI Programme Manager for the IDeA said, “We are delighted to support the NLPG and NSG Awards, which highlight where best practice solutions have been introduced and reward their success. This year has seen huge progress in the advance of the NLPG and NSG initiatives and these Awards continue the focus on the efficiency agenda within local government and its impact across the public sector.”

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