It's a make-or-break national challenge to meet the surge in demand. And with the sheer number of stakeholders involved, it’s critical that they quickly and confidently choose the right locations. Finding the right location for a charger is notoriously hard – but when you use GIS those decisions can be made much faster.

For example, Waltham Forest council in London is installing chargers connected to lamp posts. These are small and located roadside, feeding off the existing lighting infrastructure. Simple? In fact, Waltham Forest calculate they'll need to:

• Consider whether lamp column infrastructure is appropriate for the chosen location
• Ensure lamp columns are at the front of the pavement, to avoid trailing cables and liability implications
• If a lamp column is back of footway, allow adequate footway widths for bollard at front of footway
• The optimal use of lamp columns requires two or three lamp column chargers on each street to ensure residents are always able to access a charging point; there needs to be enough suitable lamp columns on each street under consideration to meet this requirement ensuring charging point locations chosen are resident led in areas of existing demand and where there is likely to be future demand
• Ensuring columns are practical for the installation of the infrastructure – columns must adhere to a prescribed standard of earthing, increasing the fuse size to cope with the extra energy usage, and metering an otherwise unmetered energy supply. Also require steel lamp columns, not concrete ones
• Adequate space and no apparent services within 700mm of the lamp column to accommodate earthing mats
• Does not require a fixed/marked dedicated EV only bay

Only an advanced GIS platform can map out and analyse all these variables to determine the best locations.

ArcGIS is the solution. It's the perfect platform for identifying the ideal spots. ArcGIS combines a vast library of map layers, with spatial analysis tools, and highly specific datasets. The Esri Living Atlas library within ArcGIS is the foremost collection of geographic information from around the globe. It includes more than 8,500 maps, apps, and data layers all ready to be fed into a unified model. Third party data can be introduced with ease, to create the best possible database.

The Living Atlas includes infrastructure data, such as the UK Road Network and Crossrail route (Crossrail was designed using ArcGIS). Environmental data covers risk of flooding via The Rivers Trust and protected areas from Natural England.

Existing charge points are supplied via the Open Charge Map, a public registry of EV charge points. Open Charge Map is supplied as a layer in ArcGIS. Furthermore, Ordnance Survey road maps and Land Registry data for precise data on the distance between buildings and road.

Demographic data, via the Office for National Statistics, shows where residential demand is situated. For example average UK household size reveals residential concentration. Movement data, via location data derived from smartphones, offers a granular insight into the routes drivers take. Planners are able to position chargers exactly where road users need them.

Then there's the issue of power supply. The higher the voltage the faster the car charges. It's possible to install a variety of power ratings. These include 7 kW, 15 kW, or ultra-rapid 100 kW. The new generation are 150 kW or 350 kW. A higher rating is preferable, but a bank of ten 350 kW chargers will need a small power station to supply them. It's why the first 350 kW in the UK was installed only in 2019.

Utility companies must map out the network (including cabling, substations, converters etc) to ensure new charging points don't overload the grid. ArcGIS is the preferred platform for UK utilities majors to keep track of grid layout, and current and project demand from customers.

Retailers must also be considered. Shops and retailers can benefit by supplying charge points to bring in footfall. A motorway service station equipped with EV chargers can look forward to customers with 30 to 60 minutes to kill. Retailers see installing chargers as a huge commercial opportunity. Again, ArcGIS offers retailers a way to systematically analyse their real estate and neighbourhood to identify spots for upgrading with EV chargers.

Even mining lithium deposits required for batteries is dependent on GIS. Satellite imagery, remotely sensed Lidar data, and point cloud maps created by drones, are fused together by mining companies for a complete picture.

So GIS really is helping keep EVs on the road.

“GIS is accelerating the electric vehicle roll-out at every stage,” says Chris Jackson, head of commercial markets and sustainability at Esri UK. “From exploration in mining, supply chain sustainability, distribution and retail – companies are adopting GIS to transform their ways of working. Councils and Utility companies are using GIS to locate new chargers and charging service stations. And the biggest benefit is the speed at which all these decisions are being made. You don’t get that from spreadsheets or data alone – your understanding accelerates when you see your business in a real-world context – using maps as the ultimate digital twin.”

He adds:

“The UK government’s commitment to net zero by 2050 demands that we switch to electric vehicles as fast as possible. The cars are fantastic. The missing link is the availability of chargers. Of course it’s an inherently geographic problem, and the contribution we’re most proud of is the acceleration of thinking and decision-making – what used to take days now takes seconds – and that’s really what will help us beat the challenge.”

Chris Jackson - Esri UK

Chris is a geographer who is passionate about the environment and creating sustainable businesses & communities. Chris has spent over 25 years in high-tech software industry working with mapping and geospatial technology for government and private sector organisations as a technician, consultant and manager. He joined Esri UK in 2001 and holds a Senior General Management position covering a diverse group of industries, delivering solutions to enable Digital Transformation & Sustainability.

If economic history has taught us anything, it’s that innovation always fills an economic void. Today, a housing startup called Arkup is marketing a novel form of living to a populace increasingly mindful of climate change.

To create what it calls “livable yachts” meant to withstand category 4 hurricanes, Arkup has taken the concept of the houseboat and added luxury and resilience. Its self-propelled, waterborne homes offer more than 4,000 square feet of living space, run on solar power, and feature extendible stilts that can protect the home from turbulent seas, according to a recent Business Insider article.

Timing may work to the new company’s advantage. Some real estate and insurance experts believe the value of waterfront property could decline in the years ahead. In the past decade alone, the average premium that homebuyers are willing to pay for waterfront real estate has dropped from more than 50 percent to 36 percent, according to research by Zillow.

To answer the call of residents who value waterfront living but fear the consequences of a volatile climate, Arkup has partnered with a Miami yacht company to charter and sell its new floating homes.

Matching an Economic Need

A 2017 Yale survey found that 71 percent of Americans believe global warming is happening, and 22 percent say they’re “very worried” about it—more than twice the number who said so two years earlier.

That sounds like a sizable market for Arkup to address, but the company’s pool of prospective buyers is actually much more select, not least because its waterborne yacht costs $5 million. To market to those well-heeled buyers, Arkup and other companies marketing luxury sustainable goods need deep insight on where they live, work, and play.

Retailers, banks, prominent consumer brands, and other businesses have performed this kind of analysis for decades, often with the help of geographic information systems (GIS) technology. A GIS ties information to location, creating what’s known as location intelligence.

Location intelligence can be a valuable marketing tool for startups and established companies. Take Wayne Johansen, founder of HOM Furniture, who credits location intelligence with helping his company grow from a startup to the eighth largest regional furniture chain in the country.

Johansen discovered location intelligence with help from the marketing department at the Star Tribune, where HOM advertised. HOM was looking for particular types of buyers, and the newspaper’s GIS analysts found them by plotting demographic data on a map, revealing in startling detail traits such as income, age, family size, and lifestyle interests.

“We were in a fast-growth stage and we felt that we had a winning game plan,” Johansen told WhereNext. “But the execution became much more scientific and precise with [those] tools and analysis.”

Finding Customers to Boost Growth

A recent survey by the University of Redlands found that 83 percent of industry-leading, location-savvy companies consider location intelligence a valuable tool for discovering customer insight. By comparison, only 26 percent of spatially immature companies share that view.

For companies with sustainability-focused products and services to sell—including floating homes built for wealthy buyers concerned about the effects of climate change—location intelligence can deliver valuable insight on the customers who will help their business grow.