Direct Line Group (DLG) is the UK’s largest home and motor insurer, consisting of several well-known brands including Direct Line, Churchill and Privilege. The brand also includes NIG, one of the country’s leading providers of business insurance offered exclusively through insurance brokers.

DLG’s primary objective was to improve its assessment of risk when writing business within in its commercial property division NIG, to be achieved through more accurate pricing and better control of accumulations of risk.

The main catalyst for the GIS project was the UK floods in 2007. The devastating events signalled the need for DLG to have a better understanding of the risks they were writing.

Previous risk assessment relied upon postcode level or district segmentation, while the data needed for writing business was gathered from multiple sources. Underwriters had to move from mainframe system to rating table, and from claims records to the Environment Agency website; to assess the risk of a piece of business. In addition, data was presented in a traditional non-spatial format as numbers on a page.

“The business case for a new Geospatial system was all about improving the risk of our commercial portfolio to reduce the level of claims and run a more profitable business. To achieve this we needed to improve upon the precision offered from using a postcode level of rating,” explained Richard Jones, Head of DLG’s Geospatial Unit.

DLG needed a powerful GIS platform at the heart of its new approach and after a rigorous review process selected Esri UK as its GIS provider.

“Our goal was to develop a new system with the industry’s most powerful GIS, to provide greater insight to the business we write and therefore improve our understanding of risk,” said Jones. “We wanted to be able to differentiate between individual properties on the same street and allow a higher level of interaction with more data, enabling users to drill into maps and view contextual information simultaneously.”

Now DLG can examine a map showing a property anywhere in the UK to assess risk in terms of fire, flood, subsidence, theft or windstorm, with the ability to include additional perils as required.

“Esri UK developed both aspects of our new Geospatial system – the back-end analysis tool plus the front-end underwriter interface Risk Explorer,” said Jones. “The Esri team also developed the geocoding process to convert postal addresses into co-ordinates, which allows the market leading address point risk assessment to be carried out.”

With Risk Explorer, DLG underwriters now have all the information they need in one place, which enhances the whole underwriting process, as Jones explained: “Using the new Esri interface, staff can now visualise what the data is telling them. They don’t have to interpret a series of postcode tables with associated loadings. Underwriters now interact with a map, see where the property is at an address level, and view all of its related contextual information including perils, local points of interest, loadings, discounts and accumulations.”

By moving from postcode level risk assessment to address level, Geospatial has taken DLG’s understanding of risk another step forward. Primarily concerned with matching price to risk for the commercial division, the models created in ArcGIS are also being used in some Personal Lines pricing. Other insurers might not be aware of the risk and therefore price business at the wrong point, taking on the customer at an unprofitable level.

“Geospatial gives customers more accurate prices, provides our underwriters with a wider range of information and shows reinsurers a more detailed picture of our portfolio risk,” summarised Jones. “The increased granularity of risk intelligence means business is being priced more accurately and consistently and underwriters can be smarter about what business we take on board.”

The system also offers the ability to generate multiple quotes on more than one property in a single action, which gives a vastly improved ability to deal with more complex quotes. Through this, DLG has successfully secured some large new business accounts that previously it would not have been able to compete for.

Geospatial is also adding value in ways that were not thought of initially. Marketing are applying the insight to develop more targeted campaigns, with discounts offered to those who may now pose less of a risk to others. DLG is confident that other insurers who don’t have the same level of intelligence will not be able to offer the same competitive but profitable price.

Another added benefit is when DLG have to model the impact of fictitious scenarios on its portfolio, set by the FSA (Financial Services Authority). Previously this would be hard to do, but now a more scientific approach is applied to demonstrate how a disastrous event would impact their exposure.

By pricing risk at an address level instead of postcode, Geospatial is helping DLG run a more profitable business. It supports both the writing of larger volumes of profitable good risk business and avoidance of writing unprofitable poor risks. Geospatial is now established as an invaluable tool for the underwriting community.

Part of the Royal Air Force (RAF), the Air Warfare Centre’s training branch conducts a range of courses in the theory and practice of air combat. It aims to help servicemen and women develop the necessary skills for air operations, intelligence, electronic warfare, weapons targeting and battle damage assessment. As well as RAF personnel, the Air Warfare Centre also trains selected members of the Royal Navy and Army, plus military personnel from overseas.

Every year, up to 200 servicemen and women, mostly senior officers, are selected for the Higher Air Warfare Course and the Air Battle Staff Course. An integral part of both courses is a complex and demanding practical exercise. The exercise is called a wargame, but this name belies its critical importance. Taking place in a fictitious geographic area, the exercise requires students to react to a scenario and to plan and implement an air campaign against an opposing force.

“Wargames are crucial to the training we deliver,” says Squadron Leader Mike Lence, the officer commanding the Air Warfare Centre’s wargames section. “The skills learnt on our course are used to plan and implement missions in situations of conflict all around the world.”

When the wargames were first developed, students had to rely on paper maps and refer to many separate document-based datasets. They looked up information in tables and for geographical reference put yellow sticky notes onto maps. “It was a slow, laborious process,” says Tony Stephens, a member of the wargames team.

The tutors at the Air Warfare Centre were concerned that students were spending too much time finding information and not enough time thinking about the scenario and developing plans. “We wanted to find a way to speed up the process and provide greater insight, so that students could get more value out of the exercise,” says Stephens.

The Air Warfare Centre explored a number of different options using digital copies of paper maps and various mapping applications. It selected ArcMap, a Geographic Information System (GIS) from Esri. The organisation could export exercise data from database files in its computer model into an Oracle database and then display it using ArcMap.

The team customised ArcMap and created a range of icons to represent items in the database. The students select the attributes that they want to view – such as airfields with bombers, non-military targets or communications centres for example – and icons representing these features are visible on the map. “If it’s in our database, they can see it, and they can see what they want when they want,” says Stephens.

Students create a map view using ArcMap, display it on a large screen, and save ‘views’ to refer to later in the exercise. Data is updated automatically from the databases as the exercise progresses, and students view the progress of their missions day by day. Stephens says: “We started with the intention of creating a static, interactive map, but it quickly became apparent that we had a dynamic intelligence tool. This was a real bonus.”

The Air Warfare Centre team also added colour coding to the icons displaying exercise data. As a location or facility becomes progressively degraded by attacks, it changes colour. Course mentors flick through maps from each stage of the exercise and show students how a situation is changing overtime.

Students spend less time finding out about the fictional area where the crisis is unfolding and more time analysing the situation and developing military operations. “Students get stuck into the exercise very quickly because they haven’t got to learn the environment,” says Stephens. “They can concentrate on their plan to counter the enemy and learn about operations planning.”

Between sessions, tutors look at ArcMap to check the outcomes of each student’s decision-making and prepare advice or make changes to the exercise parameters to create more challenges.

Students can also look back over time with their tutors and easily see the point where things started to go wrong. In this way, ArcMap helps students to understand and learn from their mistakes.

Major Steve Jones of the United States Air Force attended the wargames exercise as a student. He says: “I have done other military training courses, but in my opinion this course is particularly good. It is tailored to an air perspective, is very thorough and does a much better job helping students to acquire specific skills. Rather than sitting around a table surmising about what the results of our actions might be, we see the impact on a map.”

Today, the Air Warfare Centre’s wargames have become so sophisticated that the organisation believes that it would be difficult to run the exercises without ArcMap. “GIS has become pivotal to the delivery of our training,” says Lence. “It enables us to bring together all of the information that students could possibly want to interrogate and make it available to them at their fingertips.”

Aveillant is a high technology company leading the way in delivering advanced 3D surveillance radar systems. Its Holographic Radar™ technology is applied to one of the most pressing concerns in the modern aviation industry today.

The air traffic control radars commonly used at airports today only provide a two-dimensional picture of airspace, making it hard for air traffic controllers to differentiate between a rotating blade close to the ground and a moving aircraft at 30,000 feet. Consequently, planning applications for wind farms near flight paths are often turned down on the grounds of radar interference, when the sites would otherwise be ideal for the generation of low-carbon energy.

Aveillant uniquely addresses this problem. Based on flat panel arrays, the company’s Holographic Radar technology identifies objects and intelligently removes unnecessary “clutter” from the air traffic control picture. Air traffic controllers can therefore get a clean view of their air traffic, enabling them to better manage their airspace and general safety around the airport. The company’s advanced radar systems are typically used by wind farm developers to help them overcome the problems that turbines cause and enable aviation objections to be removed.

With over 3,500 planning applications in progress for wind farms across the UK, Aveillant needed to be able to identify precisely those developers that would benefit most from its 3D radar system. It then needed to identify the best locations to site its radars to give the maximum amount of coverage for clusters of prospective new wind turbines and nearby airports, while taking into account a range of different factors from accessibility and cost to environmental sensitivities. The company had a lot of data that it needed to make sense of, but it was all in separate locations in written formats.

The solution to Aveillant’s challenge came in the form of geographic information system (GIS) technology from Esri UK.

The company now uses Esri’s ArcGIS Desktop to plot the locations of traditional radars alongside planning applications for new wind farms. This enables it to immediately identify which proposed new developments could potentially cause radar interference. It then uses the GIS to analyse data, such as the size of the proposed development and the status of the planning application, to identify the strongest potential business opportunities.

Next, Aveillant uses ArcGIS tools, such as Esri’s Spatial Analyst extension, to conduct business and financial modelling to help it identify the optimum site for its radars to benefit large developments or groups of wind farms in a similar area. It can take into account terrain, roads, rivers and power sources to find the site that will deliver best coverage for least cost.

Then, when Aveillant is involved in negotiations and conversations with wind farm developers, airports and planning authorities, GIS is used again to produce reports clarifying the coverage of Aveillant’s 3D radar system. In coming months, the company plans to use Esri’s ArcGIS Online solution to give third parties direct access to its interactive maps. Ben Tilley, GIS business support analyst at Aveillant says, “ArcGIS has applications in absolutely every part of the company.”

The use of ArcGIS enables Aveillant to focus its attention on those wind farm developments that are most likely to benefit from its radar technology. It can therefore increase its sales success and install more of its radar systems more quickly. “GIS is now a key part of all our prospecting, bids and investment decisions,” says John Allan, commercial director at Aveillant. “It is helping us to build the business.”

GIS has replaced many manual research tasks, enabling employees to work much more efficiently. At the same time, the business now has much better information at its disposal, which enables it to find the most cost-effective sites for its radars very quickly and easily. “We can potentially identify an exact site, within a few meters, before even leaving the office,” says Tilley.

Most importantly, GIS has become an invaluable tool for sharing information with developers, airports and planning authorities and helping these third parties understand the benefits of Aveillant’s Holographic Radar. GIS plays a particularly critical role in helping to reassure airports that proposed wind farms can go ahead, as they will have better radar information to help them manage their airspace and ensure safety around the airport. “GIS enables us to present an accurate dynamic map of how we can solve the radar interference problem,” Tilley says. “It gives everyone confidence that our solution brings them benefits.”

Aveillant is a relatively young company with big ambitions. In the years ahead, it hopes its Holographic Radar systems will be the catalyst that speeds up the spread of renewable energy sources across the UK. “The effect wind turbines have on aviation radars is holding up billions of pounds worth of investment in renewable energy,” comments Allan. “GIS helps us to deliver a solution, address airports’ concerns and encourage greater acceptance of wind turbines for the benefit of the environment.”

Atmos Consulting Ltd (Atmos) is a leading independent environmental consultancy specialising in the complex task of finding the best site for renewable energy projects such as wind farms, hydro-electricity and biomass. Clients are utilities, developers, industry, communities and the public sector.

To excel, Atmos needs to help clients identify sites that will maximise the energy generated and optimise profitability, while minimising environmental impact. They must also provide convincing, robust evidence that the site meets planning requirements.

Atmos relies on geographic information system (GIS) technology to consolidate, analyse and present vast quantities of data. “GIS underpins everything we do”, says Fraser Mackenzie, a Director of Atmos.

The firm was using several separate desktop GIS solutions, but with a growing workload, it was increasingly difficult to manage its geospatial data. Furthermore, having various single-user licences and no central geospatial database, meant geospatial data was not accessible to all staff. “The systems that had worked very well while the company was small were no longer appropriate for the size of business that we had grown into” explains Lucy Arnold, senior GIS and data manager. “Doing nothing was not an option,” states Mackenzie.

Atmos selected a single, central repository for all its geospatial information, with a robust infrastructure for delivering GIS services to staff. Using Esri’s ArcGIS Server, Atmos centralised its diverse geospatial assets and implemented a two-tier approach. Their GIS specialists have advanced ArcGIS tools for in-depth analysis, editing and presenting data, while their general users view maps through an ArcGIS-driven intranet application, known as the Spatial Information Delivery and Analysis web (SPIDA-web), which enables them to quickly find the information they need.

ArcGIS Server also enables Atmos to create sophisticated models, such as statutory bird collision risk analysis. Once built, they can re-use the model, instead of having GIS specialists repeating time-consuming procedures.

Atmos condenses complex analysis into clear, simple recommendations. “ArcGIS enables us to perform a deeper level of analysis of the environmental, commercial, physical and social constraints at potential sites”, says Arnold. “By gaining a detailed understanding of all of the issues, we can provide expert advice and a high quality service to our clients.” The ArcGIS models are repeatable and consistent. “The data that we produce from our models is robust, transparent and reliable”, says Arnold. “That means that the authorities can have confidence in our analysis.”

Reduced risk for clients
A delayed or refused planning consent wastes time and money, but Atmos minimises this risk. “There is no such thing as an easy site” muses Mackenzie, “but we can steer developers clear of sites where our analysis shows it will be almost impossible to get permissions.” Maps generated by ArcGIS are included in Environmental Impact Assessments and can be crucial in demonstrating full consideration of all potential impacts: around 90% of Atmos’ planning submissions are approved. “The quality of the maps in our reports really does help”, says Mackenzie.

Faster project delivery
Atmos evaluates potential sites more quickly, partly through ArcGIS automated analysis models. It takes a few minutes to run ornithology queries for which data had to be manually collected in the past. “ArcGIS helps us to identify the most appropriate locations for projects in a much shorter period of time”, says Mackenzie. “Most of our clients’ projects are time-critical”, explains Mackenzie. “Having GIS capabilities on every desktop helps to speed up the turnaround time of projects.” Using SPIDA-web, staff can easily access up-to-date maps and overlay current data, responding quickly and knowledgeably to client enquiries.

More efficient operations
GIS specialists no longer have to respond to low-level enquires, and now focus on tasks that add greater value. “We have taken the simple work away from the GIS team, leaving these specialists free to do other, more complex analysis projects that really do need their expertise”, Arnold says. Because ArcGIS provides a single repository for spatial data and maps, maintaining information assets is simpler and quicker. Previously, every time a map was updated, a new pdf had to be issued; now all staff access the latest maps via SPIDA-web.

New markets
Capitalising on the expertise of its GIS team, Atmos is investigating marketing its GIS analysis services, moving GIS from a business support function to a core service area, making Atmos a bigger, more diverse environmental energy consultancy. “GIS is fundamental to all our future plans,” concludes Arnold.

The Aster Group is an ethical social enterprise providing services to over 75,000 customers including homes for rent or purchase, care and support, and property maintenance. Employing over 1,500 staff, the group has assets of over £1 billion, a turnover of £145 million and more than 27,000 homes.

The long-term strategy at Aster has always been to see whether GIS can be used across the group.

“Aster Group wanted to develop its application of Esri GIS and look for new areas of the business that could benefit,” said Roy Thompson, Aster Group’s IT director. “In practice, this means we map information that will lead to better management of our properties, deliver more information about our customers, increase efficiencies or achieve a direct cost saving.”

Using Esri UK GIS, Aster built an online mapping portal called AsterMaps to integrate all of its spatial data, as Andrew Bradley, business systems analyst (GIS) at Aster Group, explained: “As a group, we have Aster Property, Aster Homes, Aster Communities and Aster Living, which all perform separate functions. Using GIS, we joined-up the business and can reference any data from these divisions in one place. Now staff can see numerous attributes about a property, such as occupancy, repair costs, rent arrears, energy ratings or tenant profile, all on the same map.”

This integrated, geographic view has delivered new levels of location intelligence at Aster, which is now being applied across the group, helping more staff make better decisions.

One area of asset management GIS is helping to improve is development and leasing. By looking at all the factors involved in an initial site investigation, such as stock information, occupancy, garage voids, access routes and who owns what land, Aster has been able to identify several new development sites. So far, this has led to secured planning on three sites, which will produce 16 homes. A further 27 properties to be built over six sites are awaiting planning permission.

The GIS also presents a more accurate and efficient framework for leasing land to customers to build a garage, create parking, gardens or allotments.

“Applying mapping in this way is helping to reveal development opportunities in a way not possible with physical site visits or by using paper maps,” said Andrew. “We also have a better picture of the land we own, so we can make the best use of small pockets of land and generate other additional income from leasing.”

One simple but highly effective exercise has achieved a far more efficient approach to maintaining properties. Aster plotted how its properties were grouped together in zones for maintenance purposes, in relation to where maintenance staff lived and worked, along with the location of building materials and major roads. It became obvious that some staff were travelling unnecessary distances to their allocated zone, or went past properties that were a different team’s responsibility.

The findings allowed the group’s maintenance business, Aster Property, to reconfigure the zones by grouping together neighbourhoods, estates or villages in a much more logical, spatial way.

“Managing maintenance resources using GIS has saved a significant amount of travelling time and fuel,” commented Bradley. “The new method means we can reach customers a lot quicker too.”

On a tactical level, using the new GIS has allowed Aster to create and map its own Tree Survey data, eliminating the need to pay external consultants which saves the group around £80,000 a year.

The GIS is also enabling Aster to create energy-efficient homes for customers. By overlaying different fuel types, property energy ratings and Government fuel poverty figures, the software shows where customers risk fuel poverty and may be struggling to pay their bills. Aster can now take action ahead of its planned maintenance programme, to make sure customers have affordable and effective heating.

Mike McCarthy, Aster Property operations director, said: “GIS has fundamentally changed the way we deliver our asset management strategy. From managing our repairs and planned maintenance programmes, through to mapping our estates’ performance in support of our wider stock options appraisals, it’s a tool we wouldn’t be without.”

“Today, GIS is core to the way we operate,” concluded Bradley. “During the last year, our use of GIS has increased by 50 per cent and I can only see this figure rising as more staff recognise its benefits. They understand the importance of location in making decisions and now come to us with ideas of how GIS can help the business, which is a great situation to be in.”

Willis Group Holdings plc is a leading global insurance broker with 400 offices in 120 countries. The firm delivers a full range of professional insurance, reinsurance, risk management, financial consulting, human resource and actuarial services to corporations, public entities and institutions around the world.

Risk is an inevitable factor in any enterprise. Yet, for large multi-national organisations and businesses with global supply chains, understanding and managing that risk can be hugely complicated. Risk managers need to be able to assess hundreds of factors, ranging from the political stability of a country to the probability of an earthquake – at dozens of international locations – and then act upon them.

Willis supplies its corporate clients with a wealth of information and analysis to help them identify and manage global risks, including (but not limited to) climatic disasters, volcanic activity and political unrest. Until recently, this information was provided in PDF-format reports; however, clients sometimes found it difficult to aggregate this knowledge and analyse all the information at their disposal.

“There was a pressing need within our business to improve the service we offered to our clients by developing a smarter way to deliver all the intellectual capital and knowledge held within our global analytics department,” says Nick Charteris, Engineering Team Manager, Construction, Property & Casualty, Willis.

Willis decided to harness Geographic Information System (GIS) technology within a solution that would allow its clients to review asset information and the risks associated with each asset. Interactive global maps and spatial analysis are an integral part of the overall platform. Named Atlas, the solution was developed in-house by Willis, with support from Esri UK and Esri Inc, using Esri’s ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Online software.

For each new client, Willis loads location-based data specific to the client’s own business into Atlas and integrates it with its own vast reserves of risk management information and analytical power. Clients can therefore search for, view and evaluate both internal and external information at the same time, via a single easy-to-use application. Only named users, with discrete login details, can access a client’s data, so sensitive information is kept secure.

Using Atlas, Willis’ clients can gain a far deeper understanding of their global risk profile, not only at their own business sites, but at partner and supplier sites and strategic locations throughout their entire supply chains. “Our clients can investigate their supply chains visually on a map to get new insight into risks that they might not have been aware of before,” says Nigel Davis, Executive Director Platforms, Willis.

With improved awareness of risk, Willis’ clients can then implement more pro-active measures to protect their businesses. Charteris explains, “With a better understanding of potential threats across multiple geographies, our clients can manage risk more effectively and take steps to minimise potential losses.”

For example, Atlas allows clients to monitor the path of an active tropical storm and to identify property and business operations that might be impacted. Clients can then respond quickly to put measures in place to protect these assets in order to reduce the financial losses that might occur through property damage and business disruption.

As a web-based solution, Atlas can be accessed by clients outside their offices, using their home computers, laptops or tablets. Consequently, managers who are travelling to overseas factories or visiting potential new suppliers can access risk data on demand to help make strategic decisions. Davis says, “Risk data can be used to inform day-to-day business operations rather than just annual reporting and that helps to reduce risk.”

In addition, use of the Atlas solution could potentially pave the way for clients to obtain more cost-effective insurance premiums. When they renew their corporate insurance, they will be able to provide accurate location-specific information which can be used to create a comprehensive risk assessment. “Atlas can help clients become more attractive propositions in the insurance market,” says Charteris. “With accurate risk profiles, we can help broker their risk to insurers, and drive better value for them.”

An added advantage of the solution is that it provides organisations with better control over who has access to risk management information. It is no longer possible for employees to forward PDF documents to other (internal or external) recipients by email; instead only authorised users can log into Atlas to view and analyse potentially sensitive risk data.

As well as benefiting clients, Atlas has also created efficiencies within Willis’ own business. The solution is integrated into core workflows and provides a central repository for data. Charteris says: “Atlas is becoming a single source of truth for our risk analytics intelligence.”

University College London (UCL) is renowned worldwide for its GIS research, both within the Geography department and CASA (the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis). UCL was the first university in the UK to have a lecturer in Geography and examining the spatial world has been in UCL’s DNA for quite some time. In 1833, the newly-founded University of London (now UCL), appointed Captain Alexander Maconochie, Secretary to the Royal Geographical Society, as its first professor of geography. In more modern times, UCL has played an instrumental role in the development of GIS. Roger Tomlinson, often considered the ‘father’ of GIS, wrote what is arguably the first GIS PhD thesis during his time at UCL.

With a research mission based around a series of ‘Grand Challenges’, UCL’s GIS research work is helping solve problems found in the areas of crime, environmental change, transport, public health and epidemiology.

“In the past, socioeconomic and geo demographic classifications have provided fixed indicators of the social, economic and demographic characteristics of people living within an area. Often regarded as static reports, the output was achieved using fixed data. Today, UCL is using Esri software to develop new real-time, dynamic GIS techniques, which will deliver a lot more value, to users,” concludes Paul Longley, Professor of Geographic Information Science at University College London.

Real-time, bespoke, geo-demographic GIS applications are the next challenge being tackled by the team at UCL and the recent launch of ArcGIS.com will help them become a reality.

Recent achievements include the creation of applications which process incredibly large datasets and also perform analysis fast enough for the application to be of value to the online user. One groundbreaking project examines the spatial distribution of families via their surnames.

Using a database spanning 300 million people in 26 countries, advanced GIS techniques are being applied to examine how value can be derived from such data. Surnames, for example, provide a useful source of information for the analysis of population structure, migrations, genetic relationships and levels of cultural diffusion and interaction between communities.

“The spatial distribution of a surname can tell you a lot about the kind of people who have that name”, explained James Cheshire PhD student and author “We’ve started to extract different conclusions on the spatial history of surnames by applying GIS in new ways, which is useful for understanding issues such as population genetics, or tracing historical migration into Britain during the last 1,000 years or so.”

ArcGIS has helped UCL overcome a range of challenges throughout the course of the project, including dealing with a large International database containing many different data formats, projections and levels of granularity.

When the research is completed, it could easily support historical and genealogical and chromosome research, the examination of settlement trends of ethnic groups, family migration history and even product marketing.

In addition, surnames have been used to develop Onomap classification, (www.onomap. org), where users can take a forename and surname and pinpoint a person’s geographic origins. This can help breakdown the often simple of crude ethnicity categories in a census, to gain a deeper understanding of a population’s structure at neighbourhood scale.

ArcGIS.com is an Esri website for sharing GIS content and building communities. Visitors can access a number of free, ready-to-use base maps for projects and applications, including community maps that have been built with data from organisations around the world; or easily create maps and mash-ups quickly using a JavaScript Web Mapping application. Server based GIS development has taken a big step forward as users can upload complex GIS applications and maps, accessible for anyone to use. It overcomes the issue of working with multiple data formats in a distributed environment and allows users to create mash-ups with Esri created base maps.

ScottishPower supplies electricity and gas to over five million homes and businesses. It is part of Iberdrola, one of Europe’s largest electricity groups. The company is a veteran of tightly integrated office and mobile geographic information systems (GIS). Guy Jefferson, Customer & Performance Director says “GIS plays a particularly important role in helping the company to manage and maintain its assets. These include underground cables and pipes, overhead lines, poles, pylons and substations, all of which are dispersed across a UK network that is more than 112,000 km long.”

ScottishPower recognised that GIS was one of its most critical business systems, and one that added value. However, its systems were out-of-date, inadequately supported and, in some cases, could not be upgraded to support new hardware or use better data, and this was contributing to higher licence costs.

“Our assets are widespread, and we don’t have as many staff with local knowledge of the network as we did ten years ago”, explains Dave Clarke, Spatial and Mobile Delivery Manager. “GIS is therefore essential for helping both our office-based employees and our field-based engineers to find our assets and understand how they are connected.”

ScottishPower decided to upgrade its entire environment and create a next generation GIS, starting with mobile applications.

To deliver the industry-specific mobile applications required by ScottishPower, Esri UK teamed up with Sigma Seven, specialists in mobile solutions for the utility and network asset management industries. GeoField, its field mapping and data management solution, is powered by Esri’s ArcEngine mapping technology and was already used by ScottishPower.

The partners worked with ScottishPower to assess requirements and configure, test and deploy a range of new and upgraded mobile GIS applications. Esri mapping technology was used as a single common GIS engine underlying the mobile solutions, enabling field hardware, such as tablet PCs, to be upgraded.

“One of our key requirements was to first integrate the GeoField solution with our legacy GIS so we were able to get up and running with improved mobile GIS applications very quickly, with minimal investment in application development”, explains Clarke. “It also needed to seamlessly migrate to the planned Esri office systems for our enterprise solution.”

The benefits are evident in many parts of the business. Most significantly, they are helping ScottishPower respond promptly and efficiently to reported power outages. All the 350 first response staff, known as DARTS (Direct Action Response Teams), have new tablet PCs with access to maps of all assets, across the entire network. The maps are stored on hard-drives to ensure access even in remote areas and during storms.

“A big driver in our business is the need to ensure the environment our staff work in is as safe as possible”, says Clarke. “Our mobile GIS applications are crucial for helping DARTS to respond quickly, effectively and safely to customer issues. The upgraded maps will undoubtedly provide accuracy and clarity in our records that give confidence to staff working with our assets.”

Workflows are more efficient. For example, a new application for managing overhead power line inspections is fully integrated with the asset management system. Head office staff plan the inspections, and schedules are automatically sent to inspectors via a standard form. Inspectors select a job on their tablet PC, and get a map of the area, highlighting the poles and lines that need inspecting. When they mark the inspection as done, the pole or line changes colour on the map.

Tree surveyors are another group to benefit from new mobile mapping capabilities, using them to identify trees that need trimming, create schedules for clearance and to manage felling permissions with land owners.

The deployment of upgraded mobile GIS has taken place on a large scale. The system was delivered on time, within budget and quickly gained acceptance with and positive feedback from the 600 individual field operators initially using it.

Building on this success, ScottishPower is confident about fully integrating its office and mobile GIS platforms to enable key business processes to be further streamlined. “This will give us a fully connected model of our entire network”, explains Clarke. “When faults occur, we will then be able to trace them all the way through the network to see where they originate and which properties are affected… We expect to be able to make a lot of efficiency gains from this extension to our core GIS.”

National Grid plc is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world. It delivers energy to millions of homes and businesses across Great Britain.

For National Grid, accurately pinpointing people, properties and infrastructure is essential in order to run a safe network and deliver responsive customer service. But within its UK Gas Distribution business, maintaining reliable location information was challenging. The staff – from engineers, to customer service operatives, to asset managers – relied on a variety of systems to do their job. More challenging still, each system used different sources of address data, referenced and searched in different ways.

This gave rise to a number of problems. “Inaccuracies would often creep in across different systems,” says John Turner, Project Manager for National Grid. “Some addresses might be spelled incorrectly or recorded differently in different databases. This added time and risk to our work, which – especially for our emergency response activities – we simply couldn’t afford.”

To enhance safety, increase efficiency and boost regulatory performance, National Grid decided to tackle this problem as part of its ambitious Gas Distribution Transformation Programme. This saw the company reduce its business systems from forty to just four – one of which was a Geographic Information System (GIS) from Esri UK.

Built into this system was Esri UK’s innovative LocatorHub solution.

LocatorHub is a powerful location management solution. It gives utilities centralised access to any datasets, from public data such as Ordnance Survey, to their own sets of addresses, roads, network assets and vulnerable customers. This creates a ‘single point of truth’ for all location information in the business.

Importantly, the system constantly cleanses address data, correcting inaccuracies and removing duplicates. It gives every location a set of coordinates, for pinpoint accuracy. And it’s very easy to use; users can search for information using xy coordinates, standard address formats, asset addresses and includes fuzzy matching.

LocatorHub can also be embedded into applications. At National Grid, it is built into the Esri desktop and integrated into all key business applications – from the CRM system to its SAP plant maintenance application – putting reliable location information at the heart of business processes.

As soon as LocatorHub was populated, John and his team cleansed their data to ensure all records were accurate. “We verified 22 million addresses provided by Xoserve to be able to link vulnerable customer and meter information with our LocatorHub addresses. We also cleaned our asset location data, and gave xy coordinates to everything in the system, creating a highly accurate, centralised set of data for use across the business.”

National Grid has completed 1.5m jobs in the last 12 months using LocatorHub to identify properties or gas sites, and verified more than 60,000 gas site locations.

The business now has one point of reference for all activities at a site. “That includes all jobs we’ve carried out, and a full customer history. We can even centrally log details of all people related to a particular site, from landowners to occupiers and their agents.” explains John.

“This helps our engineers deliver better service. And it’s easier to get the business intelligence to make more informed strategic decisions.”

LocatorHub also helps National Grid respond quickly to emergency call-outs. As the organisation responsible for the UK-wide National Gas Emergency Service, this is business-critical. “We are targeted by Ofgem to respond to uncontrolled leaks within 1 hour,” explains John. “This can be challenging, especially when people report smelling gas at places without an address, such as a field or a canal bank.

“LocatorHub lets our call centre team position a map to mark the xy coordinates of a potential leak. This can save our engineers minutes or even hours in locating the leak, which is vital for protecting the public.”

When it comes to incident investigation, LocatorHub offers impressive time savings. Investigation requires a lot of information – from a site’s repair history, to recent activities at nearby premises. “Previously, collating information about an incident could take several weeks. But with LocatorHub, we can identify premise and job history in less than a day,” John confirms.

Of course, address data is always changing. But now that LocatorHub is in place, National Grid has a way to manage this efficiently. “If a site doesn’t exist in our systems – perhaps it’s a new-build – LocatorHub lets us add a temporary location, so we can continue with our work until we validate it,” he says.

John believes LocatorHub will be a key part of National Grid operations for many years to come. “LocatorHub enables us to manage the address lifecycle, from plot all the way through to demolition. That’s absolutely fundamental to the work we do, but we would never be able to handle it on our own. The Esri system is a core part of our business.”

EE is the UK’s largest communications company, providing mobile and fixed-broadband communications services to more than 27 million customers through the Orange and T-Mobile brands. The company employs more than 15,000 people and operates over 720 retail stores across the UK.

EE knows the importance of listening to what its customers want in order to deliver the best services. But following the merger of Orange and T-Mobile, the new business found it a challenge to get insight into its customer data. “We had an awful lot of information about our subscribers and their mobile usage, and the volume of data was growing all the time. We were struggling to use it effectively to understand the full customer journey,” says Jen Wells, Multi Channel Geographic Development and Reporting Manager for EE. “Very early on, we realised we needed a way to understand which data was valuable, plus a way to draw insight from it and share it around the organisation. We wanted smarter analytics that would help us learn more about our customers and make informed decisions about how to meet their needs.”

For EE, using GIS to get this insight was the most obvious solution. “We knew we wanted to use GIS because of the visual way it presents data,” says Wells. “What we didn’t know was which technology would be best for us.”

EE compared technology from a number of GIS providers. Based on the findings, the company provisionally chose ArcGIS 10 for Desktop from Esri UK. “It was clear why Esri is the market leader. Its GIS solution has greater capability and functionality than any of the others we looked at.”

However, it wasn’t just the technology that was important to EE. Training was also an important element of the solution, to help the business get the most out of its investment. Before committing to a purchase, Wells discussed the training options with her Esri UK account manager. “Seeing as I’d never used GIS technology before, he recommended that I attend ArcGIS for Desktop Part 1, a two-day training course that covers the basics of the technology. He also explained we could work together to develop a bespoke training plan that would help me tackle each stage of our customer data analysis with the right support. We opted for five sessions, spread out over the course of a year.”

“I was impressed with this tailored approach. I felt confident that the technology and training package was the best option for our business.”

Today, EE is successfully using the GIS to get new customer insight. “We’ve made good progress thanks to Esri UK. I now have the knowledge to experiment with the software and to set up my own models,” Jen confirms. “And we’re constantly reassessing how we use the technology, to be sure we get the most out of it.”

“Other areas of the business are now using the GIS, and people are very excited about what the technology can do. They love the way it helps them to visualise what’s happening around the country. Over the past year, the GIS has become part of our daily vocabulary.”

Wells has also found the ArcGIS 10 for Desktop Part 1 course to be very valuable. “It showed me what I needed to know to get started with the software straight away. It also gave me the knowledge to get the most out of my bespoke training programme from day one.”

Wells now plans to attend training on ArcGIS Spatial Analyst and ModelBuilder. “As the Esri tool has so many capabilities, I think that the training, particularly the bespoke training, is very worthwhile. The training we developed with Esri UK was very tailored to our needs.”