Lincolnshire Lights in the Sky?

Many readers will not be able to place West Lindsey on the map. But most readers will have heard of the ‘Dam Busters'. Well, the Dam Busters - 617 Squadron - took off from RAF Scampton in what is now West Lindsey, with very few lights showing, on their way to the Ruhr in 1943. The flat Lincolnshire countryside still shows many relics of WWII with many disused airfields slowly returning to peaceful uses. But RAF Scampton is currently the home of the Red Arrows RAF display team that still lights up the sky as it practices. West Lindsey District Council (WLDC) also has lights in its own virtual sky - it has recently implemented StatMap Aurora to provide web access to the council's map based information.

By Jeannette Anderson

The council has been using GIS since the early 1990's to enable internal processes and tasks to be completed efficiently and as an essential tool for producing the Local Plans documents. All the Planning Data (applications, conservation areas, constraints, etc. - some 250 datasets) were captured during the 1990s. It is this information that has now been made available via the new web application for use by members of the public, property search applications and other interested parties. Internally the council also now uses StatMap's Earthlight with the full GIS functionality on which Aurora is based.

Earthlight screen with main roads

The West Lindsey system provides a single point of interaction with geographic information held throughout the district. This includes viewing information about properties or neighbourhoods (My Property), reporting incidents/issues (Report It), applying for forms etc. (Apply for It), and finding your nearest amenities (Find my Nearest).

Earthlight Inside

WLDC are the first in the country to procure and implement the internet versions of Earthlight and Aurora. They have therefore been able to influence the design and functionality of the product and are continually working with the developer to enhance both products. Jeannette Anderson, Corporate Systems Manager, worked with the suppliers to ensure that council experience was incorporated and that all their requirements were met. She explains how it was implemented and what it is doing to help the council internally and the general public as well.

The user experience is of a rich Internet application that looks and feels like a desktop product. The speed and intuitive feel of the software have enabled the roll-out of this application to over two hundred internal users to take place within a week of going live. Jeannette produced a basic user guide for the operation of Earthlight and all users - including those previously using GIS - have commented on its ease of use and the much faster access to maps on the screen.

Full GIS functionality is available on the council intranet - creation, editing and deletion - as well as buffering, merging, tracing, etc.. Thematic maps are easily produced and extra tools have been added since the first implementation, based on users' feedback. Administrative tasks can also be performed via a browser and the Local Land and Property Gazetteer can be displayed and controlled directly. Earthlight and Aurora is capable of storing the spatial data in native Oracle and SQL Server databases enabling seamless interoperability with other GIS products. Ordnance Survey MasterMap is loaded using Statmap Courier which claims to be a market leader and works with both SQL Server and Oracle. Maps can be viewed as quickly as on the most popular commercial web sites and do not therefore hold up users' workflows. The providers also claim that Earthlight is highly scalable and can support hundreds of sessions on a single server.

Printing uses PDF format so that maps can be emailed, saved, or sent direct to the printer after users have customised print layouts with a print layout editor. A standard map output is shown in Fig2.

Typical map print out from Earthlight

Database and spatial queries can be output as spreadsheets to print as tables or text. It was especially important to WLDC that their information was secure despite much of it being available on the internet. This did not require any special configuration of the web server or changes to firewalls.?

Aurora Outside

Earthlight is used via the Intranet by all WLDC's employees and has been implemented with very little training or previous GIS experience. It is also used to configure the public facing Aurora including the design of the on-line forms.

The ‘My Property' application enables users on the web to find addresses, local administrative and electoral boundaries together with local councillors. Also available at the touch of a button are listed buildings, conservation areas, tree preservation orders and planning applications that are updated on a daily basis. Refuse collection rounds can be viewed and then linked to calendars to show next collection day. Aurora also displays a public register - this is the option Local Land Search companies use when carrying out Land Searches - that has all the information that is freely available to solicitors when carrying out conveyancing.

 "Find My Nearest" holds information on both public and private sector amenities from car parks and libraries to schools and churches. Having established which amenity is of interest the user can then click through to an external website which will show details of opening times and other current information.

"Report It" enables the public to report any type of incident such as fly tipping, abandoned vehicles etc. directly to the council via on-line forms without the need to use a telephone. An acknowledgement is sent automatically back to the customer and an email is dispatched to the relevant council department.

"Apply for It" invites users to complete an on-line form to request a service or information such as alternative formats (large print documents, audio CD, different language etc), to request services and to comment on planning applications.

Those that follow the government target setting agenda will have heard of National Indicator NI14 - Reducing Avoidable Customer Contact. This has nothing to do with communicable diseases but it has everything to do with reducing duplication of communications - and unnecessary communications - between the community and local authorities. In West Lindsey the Aurora application is now linked to their CRM system which helps the council to meet this target by reducing the number of ‘chasing' or reminder calls and automatically responding to all contacts at the appropriate time.

Fundamental to any council GIS is the Local Land & Property Gazetteer (LLPG). Although originally ‘built in' to the application, Aurora now links to a view of the master copy of the LLPG held on the council's main database. This removes the need for uploading the LLPG on a regular basis, and allows interrogation of the live LLPG data.

Overview of Nearest Amenities

An Enlightening Experience

Jeannette had been working on a GIS Development Plan, so a lot of the preparation work had already been completed. With Statmap West Lindsey have been able to achieved both fully implemented Intranet and Internet GIS applications ahead of time and under budget. Costs were offset by the cancellation of existing GIS desktop licences and the savings almost covered the annual maintenance cost for both Earthlight and Aurora. Jeannette said ‘The benefits of procuring these products have been far beyond our expectations - they have completely replaced all existing GIS applications. They are providing excellent value for money for all of our service areas'.

It is still early days for the new system with on-going development and frequent enhancements. The new features will include integration into our back-office systems to enable enquiries about the status of planning applications and other services - such as?local land searches.Other tools will help with priority planning, flood-risk analysis and route planning.

West Lindsey DC are benefitting from new software that takes advantage of many of the latest developments in web and PC technology. Increased functionality at a reduced cost. That's got to be good for the industry - Earthlight and Aurora are clearly shedding more light on parts of Lincolnshire.

Aurora Mapping West Lindsey can be found at: http://mapping.west-lindsey.gov.uk/maps/Aurora/html

By Jeannette Anderson, Corporate Systems Manager, West Lindsey District Council.

StatMap are at: http://www.statmap.co.uk/