Dorset County Council’s GIS team was responsible for managing the spatial data requirements for the Bournemouth, Dorset and Poole Local Resilience Forum, which is in turn responsible for the local Recovery Plan, a process of rebuilding, restoring and rehabilitating the community following an emergency or disaster. This was particularly relevant during this summer, as Dorset hosted the Olympic and Paralympic sailing events in Weymouth and Portland. The Games also prompted a series of requests for up-to-date mapping and spatial data. The need for up-to-date data had become especially urgent as the area has benefitted from extensive improvements, including changes to the highways network as well as the extensive new infrastructure built to accommodate the Olympic family.
The new data was provided along with 50 or more other Olympic data sets via the council’s own web-based mapping system OlympicExplorer. This is based on the successful DorsetExplorer which has been used by other areas of the council for several years. Having the latest aerial photography means that any responding agency was able to see precisely what is on the ground in 2012, the buildings, road junctions and even the road markings.
None of this new Olympic infrastructure was readily available in a spatial format, so we commissioned Getmapping to provide us with an up-to-date aerial survey, which would include all the new infrastructure created for the games, said Andy Elliott, GIS Manager for Dorset County Council. The high resolution data together with the 1m DTM/DSM has been invaluable for checking and correcting plans of the area and ensuring that all the agencies involved in delivering a safe and successful games in Dorset had the best information available. It has proved far more useful than a simple map, continued Andy Elliott.