Durham County Councilis using
transport data fromOrdnance Surveyto boost the
efficiency of a range of transport services.
The council has deployed the OS MasterMap Integrated Transport
Network (ITN) layer, an up-to-date digital transport network
dataset, into its
geographical information system (GIS), which currently produces
more than 200,000 map images per month.
The move allows the council to optimise the deployment of
community services, such as its mobile libraries, and make the best
choice of transport for people under its home-care scheme.
In addition, it will also help the council plan how traffic
accesses civic amenity sites and act as a general route-planning
tool.
Providing transport services takes up a large part of the
council's budget, so finding ways to improve routing efficiencies
has the potential to result in substantial savings, as well as
helping to limit the impact of fuel emissions on the
environment.
The Council uses a tool called RW Net Server from RouteWare,
which is enabled by OS MasterMap ITN layer with road routing
information.
The data is updated every six weeks and includes a host of road
restriction details such as one-way roads, no-entry points, turning
restrictions, and bridge height and weight limits.
Brian Dougherty of Durham County Council's corporate GIS Unit
says, "The rich attribution and high level of accuracy of OS
MasterMap ITN Layer has enabled us to effectively re-evaluate a
wide range of issues and services such as car mileage claims, waste
management and the optimisation of mobile libraries."
He said, "This has the potential to deliver substantial cost
savings to the council, as well as reducing the environmental
impact of vehicle emissions."
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