Ordnance Survey is celebrating two years of its addressing product range, ‘AddressBase’ by sharing its successes since its launch. AddressBase, AddressBase Plus and AddressBase Premium are the three products available and are a source of address data that combines information from local government’s National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG), One Scotland Gazetteer (OSG), Ordnance Survey’s OS MasterMap Address Layer 2 and the Royal Mail Postcode Address File (PAF). It is brought together by GeoPlace, a partnership between Ordnance Survey and the Local Government Association. Under the Public Sector Mapping Agreement (PSMA) and One Scotland Mapping Agreement (OSMA), the whole of the public sector in England, Wales and Scotland has access to the AddressBase product, free at the point of use.
Chris Chambers, Address Portfolio Product Manager at Ordnance Survey said: “AddressBase has created Great Britain’s most comprehensive and definitive source of accurate spatial address and property information data for both Public and Private sector use. It is revolutionising the way organisations identify, locate and manage services, and successfully addresses the problems that can arise from organisations using old or inaccurate data.
“We are delighted with the progress made in the last two years with over 97 per cent of Royal Mail’s PAF data now in AddressBase, as well as and an additional 11 million Local Authority addresses. This content is increasing all the time.”
AddressBase contains details for every property along with its ‘Unique Property Reference Number’ (UPRN). The UPRN is never replicated, even when a property is demolished, and its use is changing the way local authorities, emergency services, government departments and commercial organisations work collaboratively. From risk analysis to refuse collection, and maintenance of parks to postal delivery, AddressBase data is putting efficient service delivery on the map.
Once North East Ambulance Service joined the PSMA it wasted no time in signing up to AddressBase Premium and integrated the products into its command and control system supplier Cleric. This provides its call centre staff with the most detailed and up-to-date geography available, enabling them to quickly and accurately identify the correct locations of incidents. The historical changes to addresses included in the AddressBase Premium product also identify locations where the caller may not have the most current address details. With the same Cleric systems now in use for the new 111 service, non-emergency calls will also benefit.
Steven Pratt, IT Systems Manager from North East Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust commented: “Access to the most up-to-date and accurate mapping data available is essential in responding effectively to emergency calls. Through membership of the PSMA, we can easily order and manage regular supplies of mapping, including OS MasterMap® Topography layer and the new AddressBase® Premium product, which will provide our call centre staff with the most detailed mapping and comprehensive addressing available to locate incidents effectively.”
Northumberland National Park Authority (NNPA) is a statutory planning authority with responsibility for all planning applications within the National Park boundary. It adopted the AddressBase Plus product to standardise all its planning applications against the definitive spatial address dataset for Great Britain. This resulted in the planning process becoming more efficient and saved NNPA a considerable amount of time and effort. NNPA also linked its current planning applications to locally-held historical planning information and now has the ability to link additional information held against a property, such as broadband speed, level of mobile phone coverage, property insulation and solar energy generating potential to the UPRN.
Ed Huspeth, GIS Officer at Northumberland National Park Authority said of its use of AddressBase Plus: “Using AddressBase data has not only saved us time in the planning process but it’s also enabled us to achieve things we’ve never done before.”
For more information on the AddressBase product range please visit http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/products/addressbase-products.html
