Local Government Boundary Commission completes record-breaking review with Laser-Scan
Written by Laser-Scan
07 November 2006
Cambridge, 7th November 2006. The Local Government Boundaries Commissioner (LGBC) for Northern Ireland has cut the boundary definition time of its current review from 12 months to 2 months thanks to a new system from Laser-Scan.
Laser-Scan has provided technology and services to deliver a Mapping Production System as an enhancement to the Parliamentary Boundary Commission GIS, and to facilitate a review of all local government boundaries in Northern Ireland. The project was split into two parts: - Electoral database – approximately 70,000 entries in the electoral database did not have a valid Pointer® address (the standard address database currently being developed for Northern Ireland). Boundary review – LGBC needed to review and reduce the existing 26 council areas to 7 new local government districts, with each district required to contain around 60 wards. Previously, the local government boundary definition had taken 12 months. Thanks to Laser-Scan’s spatial technologies and expertise, LGBC were able to carry out the process within 2 months and with half the number of personnel, leaving staff free to work on other projects. More than 420 major boundary changes were made and 1,000,000 electorate addresses, including 70,000 manually validated, were matched to Pointer within just 6 weeks. This has produced an extremely valuable dataset within record time.
The system is based on an open Oracle 9i spatial database, and the Boundary team are also using Laser-Scan’s Radius Vision™ product to generate map plots that will be used to publish the results of the review.
"The excellent results from the Mapping Production System are testament to the longstanding and close working relationship between Laser-Scan and LGBC. We gained a thorough understanding of LGBC’s requirements, and as a result have implemented the robust and rigorously tested spatial management system needed to support sensitive and critical applications for political boundary determination and review."
Crawford McIlveen, Boundaries Manager for Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland commented on behalf of LGBC:
"The GIS developed by Laser-Scan for the Local Government Boundaries Commissioner for Northern Ireland enabled electorate data to be given a spatial reference through a process of data matching with Pointer (NI definitive address database). It enabled the Commissioner to accurately define district and ward boundaries, overlaid on OSNI mapping and ortho photography, and to see instantly the effect on electorate numbers. This is ground-breaking for Commissions on these islands, and it allowed for much more informed Provisional Recommendations than were ever possible before. The system was developed and installed in only three weeks and enabled the Commissioner to publish his recommendations in a dramatically shorter time frame than in previous reviews."
About Laser-Scan Laser-Scan is the world leader in the management, transformation and quality control of spatial data. We have been providing operational solutions to organisations with large spatial databases for more than 20 years. Laser-Scan customers include prestigious organisations around the world in fields such as Defence, National Mapping Agencies, Government and Utilities. Laser-Scan's solutions are designed around the full Oracle technology stack including Oracle Spatial. Our solutions and services validate, clean and merge geo-spatial datasets, specialising in automated spatial data management and correction. We ensure that your business critical spatial data are fit for purpose for electronic processing, and that maximum value is obtained from the enormous investment made in spatial data collection through sharing, effective integration with business processes, and efficient re-use: www.laser-scan.com
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