geographic information portals––a uk perspective

Computers, Environment and Urban Systems

29 (2005) 49–69

www.elsevier.com/locate/compenvurbsys

Geographic information portals––aUK perspective

Peter Beaumont a,*, Paul A. Longley b, David J. Maguire c

a ESRI (UK), Prebendal House, Parsons Fee, Aylesbury HP20 2QZ, UKb Department of Geography and Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, University College London,

1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 7HB, UKc Director of Products, Solutions and International, ESRI, 380 New York Street,

Redlands, California 92373, USA

Accepted in revised form 28 May 2004

Abstract

This paper presents a review and interpretation of the development of geoportals in the

United Kingdom. We describe the sources and levels of UK central government support for

e-government, and the ways in which these have been used, alongside existing sources of spa-

tial framework data, to develop geoportals. We then summarise the salient technical and

organisational characteristics of geoportals that have been created at the local, regional and

national scales, before assessing the state-of-play in the development of geoportals and eval-

uating future prospects.

� 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Keywords: Geoportal; Spatial data infrastructure; E-government

0198-9715/$ - see front matter � 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

doi:10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2004.05.010

* Corresponding author.

E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P. Beaumont), [email protected] (P.A. Longley),

[email protected] (D.J. Maguire).

mailto:[email protected]



50 P. Beaumont et al. / Comput., Environ. and Urban Systems 29 (2005) 49–69

1. Introduction

Whilst the outlook for many areas of e-government remains uncertain, it is nev-

ertheless clear that geoportals have an important role to play in efficient and effective

public service delivery. This paper presents an overview and interpretation of thedevelopment of geoportals in the UK, in the context of the UK�s agenda for the

implementation of electronic government. Unlike the US experience (Maguire &

Longley, 2004), these developments have not taken place against the backdrop of

the coordinated creation of a national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI). However,

we suggest that a �bottom up� approach to the development and application of geo-

portals has nevertheless allowed a range of government organisations to develop a

range of innovative and interactive map-based applications, and that this is coalesc-

ing into a NSDI.These developments are taking place at a time of increased awareness of the need

to improve public service management. This not only entails delivery of new public

services, but also improved delivery of existing services. In many areas of public serv-

ice delivery, this necessarily entails inter-agency collaboration and the pooling of

information resources. There is an established track record of the successful use of

GIS to facilitate this (e.g. Higgs, 1999), and developments in GIS architectures

and networking is enabling access and interrogation of such pooled resources at a

distance (e.g. Hudson-Smith, Evans, Batty, & Batty, 2003). In this paper we describesome of the synergies of approach to public service delivery that might be achieved

using geoportals in order to lubricate data exchange, in a representative range of pri-

ority areas of national and regional policy. We also discuss the ways in which geo-

portals make it possible to explore new ideas that have practical relevance and the

power actively to engage policy-makers, practitioners and novice users. Finally,

through extensive footnotes, we provide an inventory of many of the most important

general and spatial data infrastructure Websites, in order that the interested reader

may explore the developing range of facilities and services that are becoming avail-able.

The central goal of development and application of geoportals is enhancing the

performance and productivity of the ever-expanding range of publicly funded organ-

isations. This assumes that managers are empowered to make a difference to the

effectiveness and efficiency of public services. This being the case, geoportals can cre-

ate organisational gains and, through geography, can contribute valuable geograph-

ical intelligence to public service management. Geoportals are thus becoming an

integral part of the electronic infrastructure underpinning service delivery, whetherprovided through conventional procurement or new types of public–private partner-

ship. As such, they are catalytic to innovation and new ways of working. More gen-

erally, they are also important in the ways in which they assemble geographic

information across domains, and thus facilitate creation of new metrics that can

be used to measure service delivery.

Geoportals are being created for use in a variety of UK public service organisa-

tions, ranging from individual local authorities, through regional partnerships to

central government (national) departments. Although coalescing in a much more

P. Beaumont et al. / Comput., Environ. and Urban Systems 29 (2005) 49–69 51

ad hoc and piecemeal manner than the top down initiatives in the United States,

these applications together lay some of the foundations for a national spatial data

infrastructure. In a strict sense, geoportals may be defined as World Wide Web gate-

ways, anchors or major starting sites that organise content and services (directories,

search tools, community information, support resources, data and applications),which provide capabilities to query metadata records for relevant data and services,

and then link directly to the on-line content services themselves (Maguire & Longley,

2004). They may also regulate commercial usage of services. However, in order to

illustrate the formative nature of the concept in UK public sector applications, we

will adopt a broader definition that is unrestrictive in terms of metadata standards

and spatial analysis functionality. Our principal motivation is to highlight the rele-

vance of recent applications to the UK Government�s agenda for modernising gov-ernment, with specific reference to some of the possible priorities of e-governmentand the more general developing needs of the emergent e-society (www.london.

edu/e-society). In order to illustrate this, we have drawn together a range of exem-

plars of practice at the spatial levels of individual authorities, regional partnerships

and national government. The UK Government has a high profile agenda for mod-

ernisation of both national and local government (Office of the e-Envoy, 2002), of

which e-government is an important component.

2. The UK Government policy setting

The UK Central Government agenda for e-government began to unfold in March

1999, with the publication of the �Modernising Government� White Paper. 1 This set

out a vision for e-government and identified specific targets. Initially the plan was

that 100% of government services would be available electronically by 2008, and this

date was subsequently brought forward to 2005. An e-government Strategic Frame-

work 2 followed in 2000, in which national and local government departments wereeach required to produce �Implementing Electronic Government� (IEG) statements.A central requirement of these statements was documentation of the critical paths

towards meeting the 2005 targets for electronic service delivery. Successful submis-

sion of these IEG statements triggered additional funding to assist in their implemen-

tation, in recognition that the necessary investments could not be met from existing

funding alone. The expectation was that on-going maintenance of such services

would then become self-financing through the resulting cost savings. In the case of

local government, each authority received an additional £200,000 in funding follow-ing successful submission of its IEG statement. At the time of writing (November

2003), local authorities are undergoing preparation and submission of their third

IEG statements. 3

1 http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm43/4310/4310.htm.2 http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/EStrategy/EStrategy/fs/en.3 http://www.localegov.gov.uk/page.cfm?pageID=186&Language=eng.

http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/oee/oee.nsf/sections/index/&dollar;file/index.htm




In 2001, government sponsored Pathfinder projects were introduced in order to

encourage local authorities to work together in partnership, both to develop new

ways of working together and to assess the benefits of joint project or product devel-

opment. These projects facilitated the �joining up� of government and encouraged a

number of cross border data sharing/access projects. Pathfinder projects ran fromJune 2001 to June 2002 and funding was made available for a total of 25 competi-

tively selected projects. These project partnerships involved more than 100 local gov-

ernment organisations and aimed to create demonstrators that might be developed

into products for adoption within other partnerships or authorities. Many of these

partnership projects included GIS or the development of websites with interactive

map-based content. Key Pathfinder projects with a GIS component included: the

Wiltshire and Swindon Pathfinder GIS 4 (a multi-local authority regional GI portal);

Surrey Alert 5 (a sustainable hub for collection and dissemination of emergency andmajor incident information); the London Borough of Brent system (a one stop shop

integrating GIS and Customer Relationship Management); Somerset Online (a por-

tal incorporating interactive digital TV); and the London Borough of Wandsworth

system (online planning information).

At the same time, UK central government earmarked additional funding for the

�Invest to Save� budget (ISB) 6 programme, under which several e-government pro-

jects were funded. ISB acts as the catalyst for projects, which are pioneering and

risky, but have the capacity to achieve sustainability given financial backing for startup. Key projects funded under ISB and involving geoportals include: the National

Geospatial Data Framework (NGDF), 7 a UK metadata portal, now known as

GI gateway; the SPIDER (Strengthening Participation In Democracy in a Rural

Area) 8 project, managed by Carrick District Council, which facilitates information

sharing between districts and county councils and helps to coordinate emergency

services and dissemination of information to the general public; and the MAGIC

(MultiAgency Geographic Information for the Countryside) 9 system, developed

by DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) 10 as a GI Por-tal with information from multiple government agencies about the countryside. Ta-

ken together, to date some £358 million 11 has already been awarded for projects to

assist in joining up government.

The successes of the Pathfinder projects were built upon by the Local Government

Online (LGOL) 12 Programme, which made £78 million available for over 100 part-

nership projects involving nearly all of the UK�s local authorities. The first call for

4 http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/environment/.5 http://www.surreyalert.info.6 http://www.isb.gov.uk/.7 http://www.isb.gov.uk/hmt.isb.application.2/learners/case_studies/1-23%20National%20Geospa-

tial%20Data%20Framework.doc.8 http://www.esriuk.com/pdf/CaseStudies/carrick.pdf.9 http://www.magic.gov.uk/.10 http://www.defra.gov.uk/.11 http://www.isb.gov.uk/hmt.isb.application.2/about_isb/about_isb_intro.asp.12 http://www.localegov.gov.uk/page.cfm?pageID=188&Language=eng.












partnership proposals was in January 2002: over 100 applications were received, of

which 64 were funded and allocated £47 million in June 2002. Geoportal projects

that emerged from this funding included the Buckinghamshire Accessible Services

Partnership 13 and East Riding GOFER. 14 The second round of funding was an-

nounced in November 2002 and attracted 123 proposals: of these, about 80 wereallocated funding totalling £26 million, and it is envisaged that several of these will

include geoportals. The 106 successful partnership applications in both of the fund-

ing rounds (with a total funding of £78.8 million) are documented on the Office of

the Deputy Prime Minister�s (ODPM�s) Website. 15

Geoportals are developing an important information providing service which can

ameliorate the kinds of problems that arise when multi-tier government structures

make access to information and services difficult and confusing for both citizens

and business. Efficient government requires that services be joined up (both geo-graphically and thematically) and easy to access, and geography can provide a very

effective linking mechanism. Geoportals also provide an intuitive interface to govern-

ment services, and can facilitate greater public participation in planning and service

design (Haklay & Tobon, 2003). In essence, e-government can improve services by

making them more accessible both internally (within government) and externally

(peer to peer and business to government). The developing range of services can

be accessed through a range of channels, including the Internet, interactive digital

television, call centres and mobile devices such as smart phones or personal data as-sistants (PDAs). These developments can also improve user understanding of the

geography of public service provision and, of equal importance, facilitate access to

such systems outside of normal government office hours.

By joining up systems in government and integrating core (�back office�) systemswith service delivery (�front office�) it becomes possible to develop common user

interfaces for data presentation and user interaction. This furthers the goals of Public

Participation in GIS (PPGIS) and is important, as few citizens or businesses are reg-

ular users of government applications (Craig, Harris, & Weiner, 2002). It also pro-vides users with access to more accurate datasets through direct access to core

systems.

It seems apparent that government investment though programs such as Invest to

Save and Local Government Online can create some very innovative services. How-

ever, as with established GIS applications (Sugarbaker, 1999), it is not only the crea-

tion but also the maintenance of such services that will determine the longer term

sustainability of geoportal services beyond 2005––when the funding regime is likely

to change and sustainability will likely only be ensured by productivity savings.In order to support e-government modernisation initiatives, the UK government

has put in place several integrated infrastructure components. This core infrastruc-

ture addresses national government, local government, citizen and business needs.

13 http://www.bucksonline.gov.uk/.14 http://www.eastriding.gov.uk/gofer/viewer.htm.15 http://www.odpm.gov.uk/pns//pnattach/20030093/1.doc.





First, the Government Gateway 16 is a centralised secure registration service for ac-

cess to e-government services in the UK. After registering on the Government Gate-

way, citizens and businesses may subscribe to any of a range of e-government

services. At the time of writing these include the electronic submission of income

tax and value added tax (VAT) returns. The Government Secure Intranet (GSI) 17

is the primary network infrastructure for connecting and joining up central govern-

ment organisations. It provides a secure and reliable connection to the Internet and a

medium for exchanging electronic mail and Web browsing, both within the GSI

community and over the Internet. Broadband 18 technologies enable high-speed, al-

ways-on access to a range of new and improved public services, and broadband

availability will become important for the roll out and effective use of geographic

information. A number of broadband projects are taking place under the UK Broad-

band Task Force. 19 UK Online 20 has been set up to provide a personalised windowfor citizens into government and provides rapid access to wide range of services,

including simple geographic tools that can be used, for example, to locate nearest

schools. 21

In addition to these core initiatives, a number of national projects add a geo-

graphic dimension to digital infrastructure. First, the National Land Use Data-

base 22 (NLUD) is a project that is managed by a partnership of four

organisations––the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, 23 English Partnerships, 24

the Improvement and Development Agency 25 (representing the interests of localauthorities) and Ordnance Survey (Great Britain 26). The project in turn aims to col-

lect land use information covering two strands: NLUD-Previously Developed Land

(PDL) assembles data on vacant and derelict sites and other previously developed

land and buildings that may be available for redevelopment in England; and

NLUD-Baseline entails the development of a comprehensive and up to date land

use map based on Ordnance Survey MasterMapTM.

Second, the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), 27 developed to Brit-

ish Standard (BS) 7666 (Spatial datasets for geographical referencing), was devel-oped in order to facilitate its creation. The standard comprises four parts that

cover street gazetteers, land and property gazetteers, addresses and rights of way.

An operational BS7666 compliant local land and property gazetteer will become

an essential prerequisite for ongoing involvement in the NLPG once it has been

16 http://www.gateway.gov.uk/.17 http://www.localegov.gov.uk/page.cfm?pageID=294&Language=eng.18 http://www.localegov.gov.uk/page.cfm?pageID=295&Language=eng.19 http://www.broadband.gov.uk/.20 http://www.ukonline.gov.uk/.21 http://www.parentcentre.gov.uk/schoolSearch.cfm.22 http://www.nlud.org.uk/.23 http://www.odpm.gov.uk.24 http://www.Englishpartnerships.co.uk.25 http://www.idea.gov.uk.26 http://www.ordsvy.gov.uk.27 http://www.nlpg.org.uk.














created. While BS7666 specifies a standard format for holding details on every prop-

erty and street, it does not differentiate between commercial or residential properties,

between occupied, developed or vacant land, between urban or rural or between ad-

dressable properties and non-addressable entities such as communications masts.

Third, the National Street Gazetteer 28 has been designed to provide an unambig-uous referencing system with which it is possible to identify any length of �street� inGreat Britain. The gazetteer has been made available through a partnership with the

UK local authorities. It has been developed in accordance with the UK National

Street Works Register Legislation and provides an invaluable source of information

for anyone with an interest in streets and their usage. It conforms to BS7666 and

provides a complete list of all streets with their names and other useful information.

The data are supplied to Ordnance Survey by each individual local authority as indi-

vidual local gazetteers and are validated and supplied through a Website. Each localgazetteer forms part of a national database.

Fourth, the National Land Information Service (NLIS) 29 is a land information

service that is used to speed up the property searches that are necessary as part of

the conveyancing process in land and property transactions. The UK Government

has licensed three private sector organisations to operate the NLIS �channel� servicesvia the Internet: each provides an on-line link to the various sources of information

that are actually held at disparate and unconnected locations, including all local

authorities in England and Wales, the Land Registry and the Coal Authority. Prop-erty conveyancing professionals, such as solicitors, are able to subscribe to these

services. A key benefit of NLIS is the ease and rapidity of identifying parcels of land

through online search of digital large scale Ordnance Survey mapping, also using ad-

dress matching against the NLPG.

Fifth, the e-Government Interoperability Framework (e-GIF) 30 is currently

available in its version 5.1 31 release. Its principal purpose is to provide an interop-

erability framework for Internet and World Wide Web standards for all government

systems. Its pragmatic objectives are to reduce the costs and risk of operating infor-mation technology systems while keeping the public sector in step with the global

Internet revolution. e-GIF addresses key issues of technical specifications, intercon-

nectivity, data integration, e-services access, geographic mark up language (GML)

for geographic data transfer and BS7666 XML Schema for address data.

In addition to these important GI focused projects, the UK national mapping

agency, Ordnance Survey (Great Britain) 32 has been proactive in creating new da-

tasets, in facilitating the integration of data sets through GIS, and in simplifying

the use of and access to such data sets within government. The use of Ordnance Sur-vey digital map data is widespread throughout local authorities and is enabled by the

28 http://www.nsg.org.uk.29 http://www.nlis.org.uk.30 http://www.govtalk.gov.uk.31 http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/interoperability/egif.asp?order=title.32 http://www.ordsvy.gov.uk.






Fig. 1. Sample of OS MasterMapTM � Ordnance Survey.


Local Government Service Level Agreement. 33 Ordnance Survey is required to meet

quite stringent cost recovery targets (Rhind, 1999), but the service level agreement

model has been successful in developing usage amongst local authorities. A similar

initiative, the Pan Government Agreement was announced in April 2003 to encour-

age usage by central government departments. 34 Together, these two initiatives have

greatly increased both the actual and potential usage of GI/GIS within UK Govern-ment.

In parallel, Ordnance Survey has developed the OS MasterMapTM 35 database.

This unique geographic database allows association between attributes and geo-

graphic features using unique identifiers. It is delivered to users in GML format

and comprises layers pertaining to topography, addresses, transport infrastructure

and surface imagery. The intention is to add data pertaining to planning approvals,

height and boundaries at future stages of development. Fig. 1 shows an illustration

of this product.

33 http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business/sectors/government/local/.34 http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business/sectors/government/central/.35 http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/products/osmastermap/.





3. Geoportal case studies

The government initiatives described in the previous section have led to the devel-

opment of a wide range of Internet mapping sites and formative geoportals, for use

within government and in opening up government to individual and business enquir-ies. Unlike the early stages of NSDI in the US (Maguire & Longley, 2004), these in-

itiatives have not been directed in any classic �top down� sense, but rather the

provision of funding has allowed parts of government to invest in new technology

and to undertake risks that might not otherwise have appeared worthwhile. The

emerging picture is of an advancing range of geoportal projects that are currently

active or are being developed in the UK, ranging from national projects, through re-

gional partnerships, to portals created by individual local authorities. The major na-

tional projects are summarised in Table 1. This table shows that the different projectshave diverse funding roots, and that they have developed to serve different needs––

some existing and clearly specified, and others that are envisaged as user needs develop.

In some systems (as in MAGIC), the primary goal is to bring together different

data sources in a seamless way, as an end in itself. In other cases, as in the Planning

Portal, the objective is to bring existing government administration on-line, in the

interests of greater efficiency and intelligibility of procedures to users. In still others,

as in the Geoscience data index, the portal offers the possibility for users to under-

take transactions and data purchases.Table 2 presents a series of case studies at regional and sub-regional scales. Here

the role of geography as a core framework to assemble the data of a range of organ-

isations is particularly apparent. A principal motivation of many of the examples is

to develop the potential of shared information resources, with regard to improving

service provision by each of the partner organisations, or improving the quality of

information provision to members of the public. Public participation is encouraged

in many of the applications, specifically through provision of facilities to request

council services. Of course, in some instances, greater ease of making service requestsis likely to lead to greater demands for them, but greater effectiveness of public serv-

ice delivery is likely to be the outcome. Table 3 lists selected local geoportals, that are

used principally by single local government organisations to supply information to

members of the public.

There is a clear need to undertake user studies of these various sites, in order

to understand not just the general diffusion of new information and communica-

tion technologies (NICTs), but also the patterns of their use by members of dif-

ferent groups in society. There have been suggestions that users begin by usingon-line resources as a source of information alone, then graduate to undertaking

transactions on-line, and finally use these resources to participate in on-line deci-

sion making through e-government. The first stage of this transition model ap-

pears to be the mainstay of the geoportals listed in Tables 2 and 3. Some of

the geoportals listed in Tables 1 and 2 evidently also include provision for con-

ducting transactions. As yet, two way interactions between government and the

public, and true participation in e-democracy appear to remain the preserve of

research applications (e.g. Hudson-Smith et al., 2003), although some (e.g. the

Table 1

Some UK national geoportal projects

Portal name Web address(es) Partners Salient characteristics

GI Gateway http://www.gigateway.org.uk � Association for Geographic

Information (AGI) (http://www.

agi.org.uk)

� Ordnance Survey (GB)

� Began in 1995 as the National Geospatial

Data Framework (NGDF)

� Concern with development of UK metadata

standards

� Subsequently funded from the National

Interest Mapping Service Agreementa in

1998 and the Invest to Save Budget (ISB)b

in 1999

� Created the askGIraffe Data Locator

(launched July 2000) and the askGIraffe

Data Integrator (launched September 2000)

� Subsequently managed and maintained by

staff seconded from the Ordnance Survey

and then by the AGI

� Provides tools for users to search for geo-

graphic data or to create and upload metada-

ta onto the service

The Planning Portal http://www.planningportal.

gov.uk

� The Planning Inspectorate

� UK Local Authorities

� Project management by IBM

and mapping contracted to

ESRI (UK)

� Aims to be the first point of contact for any-

one who wants to find out about the plan-

ning system in England and Wales

� Intended for use by a wide range of users in

central and local government, and by the

general public

� Provides the facility to submit online plan-

ning applications for development

approval

58

P.Beaumontetal./Comput.,Enviro

n.andUrbanSystem

s29(2005)49–69


http://www.eastriding.gov.uk/gofer/viewer.htm


http://maps.westminster.gov.uk/


Transport Direct In development (not live) � Department of Transport Developed by

SchlumbergerSemac with ESRI (UK)

(GIS and consultancy)d

– BBC Technology (Front end

user interface)e

– Atkins (Journey planner tools)f

– Realtime EngineeringLtd (air

information solutions)h

� National portal project to develop multi-

modal transport portal

� Three year project––value £15 million

MAGIC (Multi-

Agency

Geographic

Information

for the Countryside)

http://www.magic.gov.uk/ � English Heritage

� Department for Environment,

Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)

� Forestry Commission

� Countryside Agency

� Office of the Deputy Prime

Minister (ODPM)

� English Nature

� Environment Agency

� One-stop shop for rural and countryside

information

� Brings together definitive rural designation

boundaries and information about rural

land-based schemes into one place for the

first time

� Developed using funds from the Invest to

Save Budget and from DEFRA and ODPM

� Each participating organisation will have ac-

cess to information from the other partners

� Summary data to be made available to the

public using the Countryside Information

System

Geoscience

Data Index

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/

geoindex/home.html

� British Geological Survey (BGS) � Discovery Metadata service providing access

to metadata describing the BGS data sets.

Conforms with the GI Gateway.i

� Geoscience data on boreholes, geochemistry,

earthquakes, geology (bedrock and superfi-

cial), geophysics and base mapping

� Applications can be themed for different

users, e.g. civil engineers, local government

professionals

� Facility to request/purchase data


n.andUrbanSystem

s29(2005)49–69

59

http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/Environment/maps/mapping.htm

http://www.worcestershire.gov.uk/home/cs-corporate/cs-gis.htm


Table 1 (continued)


What�s in my

backyard?

http://216.31.193.171/asp/

1_introduction.asp

� Environment Agency � Data include bathing water quality,

sea discharge, groundwater, flood

plain extent and vulnerability,

landfill sites, pollution inventory

and river quality

Maps on Tap

(Intranet)

See http://www.iggi.gov.uk/

latest_news/

IGGI%20News%2017.pdf

� Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM)

� In association with Ordnance Survey (GB)

� In development: objective to deliver on-

line access to digital mapping and geo-

graphic boundary datasets on intranet to

central government departments

� To integrate Planning and Land Use Sta-

tistics (PLUS)

� Successful trial in 2002 led to 3 year exten-

sion

� Accessible on Government Secure Intranet

(GSI)

� OS Map Browser (Over 250,000 maps, 1.7

m postcodes, 250,000 place names)

� Includes �Funding Finder� (analysis of

government funding opportunities)

� Planning support role

� Spreading the use and knowledge of GI/

GIS within Government

a http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/aboutus/foi/classes/coinimsa.htmlb http://www.isb.gov.uk/hmt.isb.application.2/index.aspc http://www.schlumbergersema.comd http://www.esriuk.come http://www.bbctechnology.comf http://www.wsatkins.comh http://www.rtel.co.uki http://www.bgs.ac.uk/discoverymetadata/home.html

60


n.andUrbanSystem

s29(2005)49–69

http://www.cheshire.gov.uk/website/gisinternet/default.asp


http://mario.lancashire.gov.uk/



http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/clarence/

http://gis.devon.gov.uk/metacat/Public Rights of Way-http://gis.devon.gov.uk/basedata?DCCService=footpath

http://www.westsussex.gov.uk/leisureandtourism/prow/interactive_map.htm#

http://www.esriuk.com

http://www.bbctechnology.com

http://www.wsatkins.com

http://www.rtel.co.uk

http://www.bgs.ac.uk/discoverymetadata/home.html

Table 2

Some regional geoportal partnerships in the UK


Leeds statistics http://www.leeds-

statistics.org

� Leeds City Council

� Leeds Financial Services Initiative

� Leeds Manufacturing Initiative

� Leeds Media Initiative

� Leeds City Centre Management Initiative

� Leeds International Initiative

� Leeds Architecture and Design Initiative

� Leeds Arts Initiative

� Leeds Community Safety Partnership

� Leeds Community Involvement Network

� Leeds Initiative Regeneration Board

� Health Inequalities and Modernisation Board

� User access to interactive statistical maps

of Leeds area

� Data on crime, health and census statistics

� User flexibility to select area of interest

and statistical overlays

Buckinghamshire

Accessible Services

Partnership (BASP)

http://www.bucksonline.

gov.uk

� Buckinghamshire County Council

� Aylesbury Vale DC

� Wycombe DC

� South Buckinghamshire DC

� Chiltern DC

� Shared geoportal including on-line access

to community facilities, planning and

building control information

� Facility to plot circles around properties

on an online map and request email of de-

tails of current planning applications

� Facility to register for notification of fu-

ture planning applications in selected area

� Facility to locate conservation areas, pres-

ervation areas and public rights of way

� Facility to report problems requiring

council attention


n.andUrbanSystem

s29(2005)49–69

61





Table 2 (continued)


Wiltshire and

Swindon Pathfinder

GIS

http://www.waspathfinder.

net/

http://www.maps-direct.co.

uk/waspathfinder/frontpage/

index.asp

� Wiltshire County Council

� North Wiltshire District Council (DC)

� West Wiltshire DC

� Salisbury DC

� Kennet DC

� Swindon Borough Council (BC)

� Wiltshire Health Authority

� Wiltshire Fire Brigade

� Wiltshire Police

� Online facility to locate recycling sites,

schools and colleges, residential centres,

nursing and residential homes, leisure cen-

tres and libraries, youth centres, electoral

districts, wards and districts boundaries

� Facility to initiate service requests

� Access to frequently asked questions, e.g.

identifying local councillors, identifying

service levels and availability.

� Hosted externally by ESRI�s MapsDirect

group

Surrey Alert http://www.surreyalert.info/

surreyalertpublic/main

� Elmbridge BC

� Epsom and Ewell BC

� Guildford BC

� Mole Valley DC

� Reigate and Banstead BC

� Runnymede BC

� Spelthorne BC

� Surrey Ambulance Service

� Surrey County Council

� Surrey Fire & Rescue

� Surrey Heath BC

� Surrey Police Service

� Tandridge DC

� Waverley BC

� Woking BC

� Online information on major incidents

and emergencies, e.g. flooding, fuel availa-

bility, progress of foot and mouth disease

� Interactive mapping applications include

flood extent and level monitoring

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Worcestershire County Council

Joined Up Information

System (JUIS)

http://www.juis.org.uk/ � West Mercia Constabulary

� Worcestershire County Council

� Worcestershire Health Authority

� Hereford and Worcester Fire Brigade

� West Mercia Probation Service

� Worcestershire Drug Action Team

� Herefordshire and Worcestershire

Chamber of Commerce

� Herefordshire and Worcestershire

Learning and Skills Council

� Youth Offending Team

� Bromsgrove DC

� Malvern Hills DC

� Malvern Town Council

� Redditch BC

� Worcester City Council

� Wychavon DC

� Wyre Forest DC

� Community Safety Audit

� Visualisation of relationships

between pooled data

� Includes 2001 Census data

East of England

Data Observatory

http://www.eastofengland

observatory.org.uk/

mapping.asp

Partners include:

� East of England Development Agency

� East of England Regional Assembly

� Government Office of the East of England

� Eastern Regional Public Health Observatory

East of England Space for Ideas

This site provides an information

gateway to the East of England

Region. It is for people and

organisations interested in

discovering more about the

region and its social, economic

and environmental development

Multi Agency

Internet Geographic

Information Service (MAIGIS)

http://maigis.wmpho.org.uk/ � West Midlands Health GIS Service

� Advantage West Midlands

� Public Health Observatory

� Government Office for the West Midlands

� University of Birmingham

� West Midlands Cancer Intelligence Unit

Multi Agency Internet Geographic

Information Service for health and

health related information within the

West Midlands


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Table 2 (continued)


Derbyshire

Partnership

http://derbyshiremaps.

derbyshire.gov.uk/

� Amber Valley Borough Council

� Chesterfield Borough Council

� Derby City Council

� Derbyshire Constabulary

� Derbyshire County Council

� Derbyshire Dales District Council

� Derbyshire Fire & Rescue

� Derbyshire & Peak Park Sport & Recreation

Forum

� District of Bolsover Council

� English Nature

� Erewash Borough Council

� Groundwork Erewash Valley

� High Peak Borough Council

� North East Derbyshire District Council

� South Derbyshire District Council

A mapping portal covering the county and all

districts. Providing access to information

including Councillors, car parking, leisure

facilities, schools and police

London CABI http://maps.westminster.

gov.uk/index_lcp.htm

� Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

� Westminster City Council

� Corporation of London

� London Borough of Camden

� London Borough of Islington

A site combining map-based information

from five central London Boroughs including

Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea,

Corporation of London, Islington and

Camden

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Table 3

Some local level UK geoportals

Portal name Web address(es) Salient characteristics

London Borough of Brent http://www.brent.gov.uk

to view mapping applications,

Select �About Brent� and then

�Street Level�. OpenDocument

Numerous map and distance based applications including

� Property lookup (Commercial lettings and sales);

� Moving home to Brent;

� Getting around Brent

Royal Borough of Kingston upon

Thames ISIS––Integrated Spatial

Information System

http://isis.kingston.gov.uk/ Includes details about properties and their associated

planning and development history. In addition, it

provides access to community, environment,

transport and planning information

East Riding GOFER–GIS online

for East Riding

http://www.eastriding.gov.uk/

gofer/viewer.htm

Provides simple access to a comprehensive range of

local service information including Councillors,

leisure services, schools, street lighting and refuse

collection

Westminster City Council http://maps.westminster.gov.uk/ Provides access to a range of map-based information

for a prominent area of London. Serves an important

business and tourist community requiring easy on-line

access to services

Chichester District Council http://www.maps-direct.co.uk/

mapsdirect/index.

asp?id=4&ak=CHST

Provides simple access via a map-based interface to

details about Councillors, tourist attractions and

recycling centres

Cornwall County Council http://www.cornwall.gov.uk/

Environment/maps/mapping.htm

Interactive map providing access to community

information including libraries, approved marriage

venues, register offices, and Japanese knotweed locations

Worcestershire County Council http://www.worcestershire.gov.uk/

home/cs-corporate/cs-gis.htm

Interactive map-based applications Including tourism;

school locations; �find your councillor�; streetlight faultreporting; election results and public rights of way


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Table 3 (continued)

Portal name Web address(es) Salient characteristics

Cheshire County Council http://www.cheshire.gov.uk/website/

gisinternet/default.asp

Interactive map-based application allowing users

to navigate by postcode or place name to locate

information on parks, libraries, schools, residential

homes, youth centres and recycling centres

Lancashire County Council http://mario.lancashire.gov.uk/ Maps and Related Information Online for Lancashire

County Council (MARIO)

Provides access to a comprehensive range of local

services via interactive maps

Information includes aerial photography, historic mapping,

traffic accidents, public rights of way, planning, schools and

libraries

Wiltshire County Council http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/clarence/ Online map-based highway fault reporting application

Devon County Council Metadata Explorer-http://gis.devon.gov.uk/

metacat/

Public Rights of Way-http://gis.

devon.gov.uk/basedata?DCCService=footpath

Public rights of way

West Sussex County Council http://www.westsussex.gov.uk/leisureandtourism/

prow/interactive_map.htm#

Public rights of way

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Planning Portal and Maps on Tap) have evident potential for development in this

regard.

4. Some future directions and prospects

The e-government targets and associated funding have provided a catalyst for

many UK geoportal projects covering national projects, regional partnerships and

individual government departments. The development of these geoportals has not

been coordinated centrally, but has been developed through a recognition that geog-

raphy provides a highly intuitive framework within which to present and access

much government information. The UK has been fortunate to have the large

amounts of public funding available to assist organisations to create innovative solu-tions. As these developments coalesce and greater numbers of users become engaged

in e-government, it should be possible to build upon these foundations in order to

facilitate the development of a national spatial data infrastructure (NSDI) for the

UK, potentially feeding into the European INSPIRE project 36 (Annoni, Bernard,

Kanellopoulos, & Smits, 2004). There is evident potential for local initiatives to feed

into regional projects, which in turn link up with other regional projects to create

national portals.

As the functions and remit of these portals develop, so, of course, will the com-plexity associated with their construction increase, as will problems of metadata,

data interoperability, updating and integration. Interoperability, in particular, is be-

coming a key issue for many of the geoportals that have been created, and there are

many standards being developed in order to assist in the search for data through me-

tadata or data sharing through open formats. To date most of the portals described

in Tables 1–3 have been developed to work on local datasets and in many cases,

redundant ‘‘warehouse’’ copies of live data sets. As more and more government data-

bases and core systems become integrated together there will be a requirement forgeoportals to work directly with live data sets.

In many of the partnerships, particularly those in local government, the individual

partners are using different commercial Internet map server products within their

own organisations. Many of these partnerships wish to share rather than duplicate

data and thus wish to have a geoportal that can request data from each partners

internet map server. More research is required in this area to demonstrate the feasi-

bility of doing this using open standards, such as those promoted by the Open GIS

Consortium (OGC) 37 (OpenGIS in BB2 or something more recent). Several UKauthorities are investigating the feasibility of using OGC standards but there are

concerns over performance and security.

There is an evident need to think clearly about data standards (Salge, 1999). In

the UK, the Government has mandated that the e-GIF 38 standards be used for

36 http://www.ec-gis.org/inspire/.37 http://www.opengis.org/.38 http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/interoperability/egif.asp?order=title.





application integration and data sharing. For geographic data this mandates the use

of Geography Markup Language (GML) 39 which is supported by Ordnance Survey

for the delivery of OS MasterMapTM. BS7666 40 standard has been adopted for

household addressing within e-GIF. The GI Gateway provides access to metadata

and is tracking the development of the ISO 19115 metadata standards––in particularthe ISO 19139 XML schema––so that when these standards are completed, GI Gate-

way will be able to implement them. This is, in some senses, a rather dirigiste view of

the future development of geoportals. A different view is that preoccupation with

data standards is constraining the development of geoportals, and that de facto data

industry-wide standards will in any case emerge in the light of successful implemen-

tation and experience.

At the present time, many of the UK geoportals are little different in terms of data

management and user interfaces from the general class of Internet mapping websites.Yet the future development of geoportals is likely to pose new challenges arising out

of the need to demonstrate sustainability and robust performance. As interest in geo-

portals gathers momentum, project management will become more complex––

tomorrow�s portals are likely to involve more partners, using different technologies,

acting as custodians of more diverse data holdings, and representing an ever wider

range of stakeholders. These stakeholders will likely have different political and tech-

nical agendas, and are likely to require updates and returns on investment on differ-

ent timescales. The experience of those geoportals shown in Tables 1–3 suggests adevelopment model beginning with limited information provision objectives, and

subsequent addition of updates and new services after early wins have been delivered

and benefits demonstrated to stakeholders and users. Important organisational is-

sues are likely to develop, centred on maintaining the interest and motivation of

all contributing organisations––if the early successful implementation of GIS was of-

ten dependent upon the identification of a �champion� with the innovation, so this is

likely that such individuals will need to be recruited and sustained within the full

range of partner organisations. Core spatial data providers, such as Ordnance Sur-vey and the Office of National Surveys, will need to remain sensitised to the rapidly

developing market for GI, the potential for linkage to other information sources

must be understood, and project partners will need to remain aware of the full range

of data quality issues and ethical issues arising out of lubricating access to data per-

taining to individuals. Research on PPGIS will continue to be of considerable impor-

tance––user interfaces must be effective and safe to use for expert and novice users

alike, sites must be easily navigable, and the potential for multi-channel access must

be addressed. However, there is much to gain from a positive response to these chal-lenges, this should free the potential of accessing information from different sources.

Good governance entails extensive use of easily accessible spatial data, and this in

turn entails good documentation, harmonised data standards, appropriate licensing

39 http://www.opengis.org/docs/02-023r4.pdf.40 http://www.nlpg.org.uk/_public/sheet8.htm.




and access arrangements, and practicable organisational structures to ensure short

term success and longer term sustainability.

References

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establishment of a European Spatial Data Infrastructure. At Computers, Environment and Urban

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Craig, W. J., Harris, T. M., & Weiner, D. (Eds.). (2002). Community participation and geographic

information systems. London: Taylor and Francis.

Haklay, M., & Tobon, C. (2003). Usability evaluation and PPGIS: towards a user-centred design

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Higgs, G. (1999). Sharing environmental data across organizational boundaries: lessons from the Rural

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geographic information portals––a uk perspective

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