Joining up land and property information and the implications of Project Acacia Keith Murray Head of Geographic Information Strategy, Ordnance Survey BURISA Conference, London 20th May 2005

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Joining up land and property information and the
implications of Project AcaciaKeith
MurrayHead of Geographic Information Strategy,
Ordnance SurveyBURISA Conference, London20th
May 2005

• V1.00

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Topics

1. Addressing
2. Project Acacia
3. How are others getting on?
4. A framework for joined-up information
5. Current Status

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Hands up all those who think addressing is simple!
Not all addresses are on streets
Some addresses are simply land parcels
10 Downing Street, LONDON, SW1A 2AA
Alias Address
Postal Address
Some addresses do not take post
Some addresses hide several households
Geographic Address
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Operational processes now standardised
Client Registration
Blair
Mr
T

• Now standard practice in many
• Internet purchases
• Hotels
• Shops
• etc

Number
Postcode
10
SW1A 2AA
10 Downing Street LONDON SW1A 2AA
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What are addresses used for?

• Navigating to somewhere
• Delivering mail
• Delivering goods
• Delivering services
• Census
• Client register (public and commercial)
• Property registration
• Property Valuation
• Taxation
• Recording occurrence of events
• Emergency Services

geoferencing adding coordinates
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Project Acacia
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Who was involved in Project Acacia?
LGIH
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Acacia vision MoU September 2002

• a definitive, consistent and joined-up national
  infrastructure of property addresses and related
  data with the related mapping
• so as to facilitate major economies, efficiencies
  and service improvements both in the public
  sector and throughout the economy

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What did Acacia do? Six Research Topics

• Definition of Non-Postal Addresses VoA lead
• What are they? How important?
• The inter-dependencies of street name
  information and addresses LGIH lead
• NLPG depends in NSG BS7666, not all addresses
  are based in streets
• Multi-way cross-referencing across the data
  sources, Ordnance Survey lead
• Linking up the growing number of different
  address views
• Data quality aspects of address data Royal Mail
  lead
• Quality criteria
• Positional accuracy improvement and address based
  information Land Registry lead and
• Managing changes to coordinates
• Data maintenance Ordnance Survey lead.
• Keeping it all up to date, lifecycles of property

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Different views of a property
What is your view of this feature?
Physical features to be surveyed and
attributed as base unit for location referencing
Ordnance Survey
Property to be valued, classified and attributed
Valuation Office
Property to deliver services to and recover
rates from Local Authority
Point to deliver mail to Royal Mail
Building to be insured Insurance Cos
Land to be registered Land Registry
The users view is determined by their
application and thereon this affects what kind of
data they need/collect, when they collect it and
why they collect it and how they do it. A
dataset collected for one purpose may not
necessarily lend itself to different application.
Status of buildings and occupants ONS
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Unique identifiers to support data sharing
Title No
UPRN
TOID
UDPRN
represent different geographic views and are
therefore not the same
This does not mean they cannot be joined up, but
this needs to be done in a logical way
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Primary address sources content
million
iu internal use currently
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ACACIA Recommendations for further workFrom the
Pilot Research report (technical)

1. A more comprehensive independent data quality
   audit should be carried out on the NLPG.
2. An evaluation of alternative maintenance models
   for a national address infrastructure should be
   undertaken, including that of the NLPG.
3. The roles and responsibilities of all the
   partners in address creation and maintenance
   should be defined, including the role of NLPG.
4. An appropriate national level organisational
   infrastructure should be established to implement
   the Acacia vision.
5. There should be further work to complete a
   cost/benefit study, and to develop a business
   case for the implementation of the Acacia vision
   (whatever the technical solution adopted).
6. More comprehensive guidelines should be produced
   for corporate implementation of BS 7666 in
   general and building LLPGs in particular.
7. The further development of BS 7666 should be
   supported to make it more widely applicable.

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And three other work items

• ODPM funded work items
• Multi-Occupancy
• What does this mean? and how far is practicable?
• User Needs Study
• High level needs survey
• Business benefits
• Cost analysis

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ACACIA main recommendations top 8 of 22

• The pilot and research work has strengthened
  earlier beliefs that a national infrastructure as
  envisaged in the Acacia vision is feasible in
  technical terms.
• None of the existing address products currently
  meets all the needs of the national
  infrastructure.
• The key issue is to ensure a robust and
  maintained national infrastructure of addresses
  that can facilitate the linking up of application
  datasets, based on different requirements and
  views of the world.
• A proper governance structure under a
  lead-Department, working to a defined remit, with
  suitable empowerment and dedicated staff
  resources, will be critical to success.
• The solution adopted should apply nation-wide
  alongside DNA Scotland and Pointer (Northern
  Ireland).
• The roles and responsibilities of all the
  partners in address creation and maintenance
  should be defined. A clear allocation of
  responsibilities for individual elements in the
  addresses and other data and in the development
  and maintenance processes is essential.
• The first stage of a joined-up national address
  infrastructure is the linking of source datasets.
  Such an infrastructure requires selection of the
  best quality source for each category of data,
  matching source data and resolution of matching
  failures.
• Address data matching is important in order to
  eliminate duplication, facilitate ease of future
  use and ensure that new records are properly
  recognised. Such matching is best done once
  rather than by all partners.

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How are others getting on?
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Status in Europe Address Coverage

• Three main sources of address
• Postal addresses
• Cadastral Addresses
• Topographic Addresses
• Variations supplement these in some countries eg
• Population Register Finland
• Source EuroGeographics survey 2004

Summary and Figures http//www.eurogeographics.or
g/eng/documents/ref_data_ver100_part_A.pdf and
the Tables http//www.eurogeographics.org/eng/doc
uments/ref_data_ver100_part_B.pdf
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Denmark linking unique identifierseGoverment
andaccess to Public Information
OIS
Peter Normann Hansen President, Geoforum, Denmark
June 2004
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Position in South AfricaChallenges facing the
creation of a standard South African Address
System by Mercy Matherai of Statistics South
Africa _at_ in April 2005 the aim is to provide
an address infrastructure for the 2011 census
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Way Forward

• Stats SA is leading a team of intergovernmental
  role-players in an attempt to coordinate all
  address initiatives and related activities.
• South African Post Office
• Local Municipalities and Metropolitan councils
• Departments of Land Affairs
• Home Affairs
• Housing
• Water Affairs and Forestry
• Social Development
• Treasury
• Public Service and Administration
• Minerals and Energy
• State Information Technology Agency (SITA)

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Way Forward

• Comprehensive methods and procedures will be
  instituted in order to gather and compile an
  effective and efficient address database
• Decide on updating or redesigning of the existing
  database.
• Identify gaps draw some intelligence on
  available coverage.
• National Address Database (NAD),
• Cadastre from the Surveyor General
• Postal physical address system
• Postal system-
• addresses should be capture as they filter into
  the system and verify their validity. The postal
  directory should also be used to update records
• Current updates from Metropolitan councils should
  be used

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Way Forward

• Establish a continuous maintenance and update
  system of the compiled datasets
• Develop and maintain an address system that will
  be of use to the occupants of informal and
  traditional settlements
• Investigate the possibility of capturing a
  location for each structure, alternatively the
  total or partial area with multiple structures.
• Ideally capture accurate coordinates of each
  housing unit or area that it is built on, in the
  settlements.
• Capture the popular place names of the settlement
  areas.
• Accurately capture the information in a GIS.
• Have the numbers visibly displayed to mark the
  individual units be it a structure or area.
• Establish and ensure continuous maintenance and
  update of the address system

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Challenges in Traditional Areas
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Challenges in Traditional Areas
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A framework for joined up information
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Distributed information its a fact of life
.. data is maintained for business processes
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The hidden complexity of national information
infrastructures
Users Application Information
Attributes
Address Base National - all
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Evolve Networked Information plug n play

Benefits
VALUE

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Business Network
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Information Network
1
Technical Network
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Information building blocksEnabling connectivity
and promoting reuse
Cross reference Ids.
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Addresses and property parcels
Digitised Index Map
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Address ID in the Street link
Street Id in the address
Additional addresses added
Ordnance Survey concept testing (see also JUG-T2
results next presentation)
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Digital National Framework enabling data
integrity
www.dnf.org
User application Information

Associated Reference Info.


Base Reference Information Geodetic Reference
System - RTK GPS

DNF is primarily concerned with geospatial
information and its relationship to other data
and information
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Proposed new structure for British Standard 7666
ISO 19112 Geographic information spatial
referencing by geographic identifiers
BS 7666 UK profile of ISO 19112
Annex Model for Addresses

• Supports
• Classification
• Cross referencing
• User defined identifiers

Part-1 Street Gazetteer
Part- 2 Land Property Gazetteer
Part-3 Delivery Point Gazetteer
ltfuture?gt
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Current Status
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Summary Technical Progress

• Technical Model now better understood tested
• Permits distributed maintenance
• Builds on definitive sources
• Cross referencing is critical
• Information Network DNF is evolving driven by
  needs
• Common reference base (OS MasterMap)
• Third parties build their own geographic views
  on this
• The data will fit together promoting automation
• Promotes reuse data integrity
• Testbeds have demonstrated feasibility
• BS7666 Review
• Lessons learnt
• New model moving in the right direction

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Summary Political Progress

• Building on the good work that came out of Acacia
  there has been ongoing activity this has been
  led by ODPM
• There has been significant input from central and
  local government
• There is a degree of optimism now regarding the
  way forward
• Once the government machine has settled down
  post-election, work will resume and the next
  steps taken.

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• For further information contact
• Keith.Murray_at_ordnancesurvey.co.uk
• Acacia Reports
• www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/aboutus/reports