The challenge
With around 190,000 acres of rural land to manage across Britain, Buccleuch wanted to extend and simplify access to information relating to their assets. Land use has become increasingly complex with growing demands both locally and nationally, and Buccleuch recognised that a holistic approach to land management was essential. Buccleuch’s aim was to build a more complete, reliable and accurate digital inventory of their land and property assets to help manage their estates to their greatest potential. Buccleuch initially commissioned thinkWhere to undertake an audit of its spatial data and GIS infrastructure. One of the major recommendations was to move to a cloud hosted database and web mapping system.
“the move to cloud-based, online mapping will future-proof
our already enviable GIS journey. groundMapper makes spatial data available to a wider audience via an easy-to-use platform.”
Chris Brown,
GIS Manager,
Buccleuch Estates
The solution
groundMapper is an innovative, online GIS for managing map-based asset information and associated data, and for easily sharing information with stakeholders. groundMapper offers Buccleuch the perfect solution to capture and maintain specific asset datasets and associated documents, photos, drawings and reports. The latest version of groundMapper, as used by Buccleuch, includes the ability to add, update and manage custom geographic datasets, incorporates what3words geocoding and has the capacity to add non-spatial data and look-up tables. The system also offers online data editing, advanced document management and additional data services.
The rollout
groundMapper was linked to Buccleuch’s Asset Management system and gives previously non geo-referenced information a spatial component. In addition to storing Buccleuch’s own data, groundMapper provides access to an up-to-date suite of environmental and topographic contextual data acquired, hosted and maintained by thinkWhere. Data suppliers include Ordnance Survey, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) and the Scottish Government. Buccleuch has set up ‘In Progress’ layers within groundMapper. These allow staff to continuously maintain and update land and property asset data with newly identified sale areas and leases, for example, making previously isolated processes visible to all.
Managing assets to their greatest potential
groundMapper has digitally transformed how Buccleuch easily capture, maintain and communicate their land and property assets and associated information such as documents, photos, drawings and reports. Having instant access now to all their information, stored digitally within Cloud GIS, and available to key stakeholders online, provides Buccleuch with a single source of truth that can be further developed, and ensures effective data sharing and improved decision making. The collaboration with thinkWhere means Buccleuch can focus on managing and developing their estate even more successfully, informed by the highest quality managed GIS and data services provided by thinkWhere.
