GeoPlace has announced its 2019 Award winners, presented by Randall Anderson, Common Councillor for Aldersgate Ward, at the 14th annual GeoPlace conference and exhibition in central London, on 9th May 2019.
The Awards were announced at the GeoPlace Annual Conference, which took place in central London on Wednesday 9th May – attended by Jesse Noman MP, Minister of State for the Department for Transport, and William Priest, CEO of the Geospatial Commission.
The GeoPlace Exemplar Award 2019 was awarded to Conwy County Borough Council, for its Environment, Roads and Facilities (ERF) Digital Transformation Project. This award highlights an excellent example of local addressing and/or street datasets being used to deliver real-world benefits for communities in a specific area.
In Conwy, this involved a restructure of the departments responsible for almost all of the Council’s front-line services – everything from highway maintenance to parks, street lighting, road safety, flood risk management, and bereavement services. After an in-depth review, the existing Highways Asset Management system was chosen as the basis for the new departmental system. As a result, every customer-generated request for service is driven by a USRN. The result is a suite of connected, consistent, trusted Customer Portals that have been whole-heartedly embraced by the public – with significant savings, right across the Council.
Nick Chapallaz, Managing Director of GeoPlace said: "Every year, it gives us immense pleasure to highlight the outstanding work that’s being done by Street and Address Custodians. The 2019 Exemplar Awards reflect not only the time and effort that goes into delivering great service, using street and addressing information, but also the commitment that’s being made to improving the accuracy and quality of the data itself. We are incredibly fortunate to be working with individuals who care deeply about the potential benefits we can deliver as a team. Everyone can benefit from the power of location data, and this year’s Exemplar Awards are show how our authorities are using it to really bring location to life."
This year’s GeoPlace Peer Award was given to Christopher Bell, who works as an LLPG and LSG Custodian with Wirral Council. Chris’s drive and enthusiasm for the gazetteers and his approach to building relationships that can ensure data accuracy has been exemplary. His commendation cited the sheer amount of work he gets through as being ‘remarkable’, and in many ways above and beyond his remit.
The GeoPlace Data Visualisation Award was presented to Louise Tout for her work in on 'Walking distances to the local pharmacy’. Using data from the LSG and the LLPG, Louise categorised the data to depict how far each residential property was from a pharmacy. The accuracy from the datasets enabled Louise to create a meaningful map, conveying a vast amount of information via a single image which would otherwise take reams of text to explain.
The GeoPlace 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award was given to Glenn Dobson from Hull City Council, Chair of the Regional Streets Group. This award marks an extraordinary level of commitment, support and guidance for the national development of the gazetteers over very many years. Sunderland City Council and Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council were announced as winners of the Data Quality and Improvement Award for Addresses 2019 and the Data Quality and Improvement Award for Streets 2019 respectively. Both awards are given in recognition of an exemplary approach to the management of databases.
Awards were also presented for Best Address Data in Region and Best Street Data in Region together with Awards for those at ‘Gold' Standard.
Good quality address and street data underpin many aspects of local government business; from large transformation projects with the local address and street gazetteers at the heart, saving the authorities millions of pounds; to smaller initiatives which have found clever ways to join up other information, or to use the gazetteers in unusual ways.
The Awards highlight Custodians' roles within their authorities and enable their work to be more widely promoted to all parts of the authority. They allow the many services which currently use address and street data to see that the high standard of the data is externally recognised. From radical transformation initiatives saving millions of pounds for local authorities, to smaller projects improving data management by using the local address and street gazetteers in innovative ways – almost every aspect of local government business is underpinned by high quality address and street data.
GeoPlace’s awards highlight the Street and Addressing Custodians' work helping to curate and maintain that data. Promoting their work helps to highlight the importance of their role, and the potential for this data to deliver ever-more efficient and effective services for their communities.
The full list of Award winners can be seen here.
