UK Location Focuses On Coal Mining Legacy In First Pilot Project

Online, August 19, 2010 (Newswire.com) - The legacy risk of former coal mines is the focus of the first pilot project to begin under a national programme to widen access to the UK's location information.

The Coal Authority is leading the work to spatially identify sites in coalfields across Britain and share related information in an automated way using consistent digital standards.

Mining and site inspection reports are being combined with the land ownership details held by 180 local authorities whose areas coincide with the coalfields.
The work includes sites that have been risk assessed for subsidence and contamination.

The pilot will support the Authority's ongoing inspection programme and spread the provision of up-to-date information about legacy mines.

Mike Segal, Chair of the UK Location Council, the cross-government body responsible for the UK Location Programme, said: "Streams of location information from different sources will be combined through a common digital framework enabling all users to discover, view and download the data they need. This promises to transform the spatial management of the Authority's critical business data with efficiency savings automatically built into use and re-use."

Steve Pennell, the Coal Authority's Director of Information and Systems, said electronic exchange is the only viable way to pull in the landownership data from local authorities in a structured way and run it against his organisation's database.

He said: "If we were to do this any other way it would take an army of staff. The pilot gives us a much easier technical solution to this problem. We expect to have more interoperable data coming in, especially records of mine entries which will help with the ability to update site investigation reports. Feedback from 180 local authorities on a regular basis will improve our understanding and help us put more value back into the system. Ultimately, by sharing data to improve how we communicate with local authorities and the public, we can help protect people as they go about their business in former coal mining areas."

The pilot will be guided by the EU INSPIRE Directive which requires public bodies to distribute certain types of location information to a specified standard. It will follow the Linked Data web standard for sharing and connecting pieces of information and it will reflect the open access principles behind portals such as data.gov.uk.

INSPIRE, Linked Data and data.gov.uk are all elements of the UK Location Information Infrastructure (UKLII), a consistent framework enabling organisations to view and download spatial information while avoiding duplication.

A review of the pilot will highlight best practice and specific benefits while informing the wider government and business community of how well the principles of the UKLII have helped the work.

The pilot will be discussed at the AGI GeoCommunity '10 conference in Stratford-upon-Avon on September 28th to 30th. Lisa Thomas, GIS Analyst at the Coal Authority, will present a paper titled "Data in the public domain: is anyone ready?".