Groundwork GDS was commissioned by GLA to develop London’s first cultural infrastructure map providing pan London view of the cultural assets along with other useful contextual information like population growth, transport network and residential developments.  

Users can:  

• View cultural locations in the city
• Visualize the cultural locations alongside transport, planning, audience and demographic data 
• Download data for specific geographic areas by using the tools on the right hand side  
• Suggest missing cultural infrastructure by using the tools on the right hand side 
• Edit existing cultural infrastructure by clicking on a map entry  
• Understand travel times from existing infrastructure or a proposed development site by clicking on the tools on the right hand side 

Groundwork GDS, working with GLA’s Culture and GIS teams and with stakeholder involvements, developed the user interfaces and functional designs. We used ESRI’s ArcGIS API with Bootstrap/JQuery elements for the front end functionality.

The Infrastructure Map is an interactive tool which lets users explore current and future development and infrastructure projects in London. It gives boroughs and developers a clear picture of what developments are taking place, so that they can better plan for new housing and other changes. Heart of the System is a database of current developments and future infrastructure investments (from 2015 to 2050) by public and private sectors, which is exposed via secure map services and queryable via user interface. Secure data sharing processes between key partners which includes Barbour ABI, Cadent, EA, National Grid, SGN, Thames Water, TfL, UK Power Networks and all London Boroughs.  

Originally developed in ReactJS, Groundwork GDS integrated an API functionality which enabled better user interaction to the underlying datasets and facilitated collaboration between infrastructure providers by sharing the queries and results.  

Key features of IMA 

• Browse the data as a guest or as a registered user 
• Search and explore spatial datasets organised by themes – available for different data providers 
• Filter data by temporal or categorical fields, as well as apply custom spatial filters 
• Save and manage custom queries (bookmarks) in personal user area 
• Share custom queries with secure and unique hyperlink 

Other features

• Spatial analysis query (proximity analysis) to identify projects and organisations that run projects in the same locations and timeframe 
• Private (secure) and public data access with spatial analysis  
• Built using ESRI ArcGIS Server /AGOL with opensource front-end 

The Greater London Authority (GLA) manages a range of crime and community safety datasets from key agencies in a secure database.

Groundwork GDS has been commissioned by GLA to redevelop the SafeStats site as a more stable, transparent and future-proof system with user need and efficiency at its core. The database centrally hosts 30 million crime and safety records in London from 2015 onwards, contributed to directly by nine participating agencies (MPS, BTP, LAS, LFB, ED, TFL, RINL etc). Over 300,000 records are added to the database each month, accessed by over 300 users from these agencies and London Boroughs.

For latest updates see the Safestats blog.

Key features of SafeStats

• Fully open-source technology with data security at the heart

• Scalable architecture hosted in Amazon Cloud with built-in disaster recovery and access controls

• Unlimited user logins, secure onboarding and access control via OAuth2 protocol

• Profiles and user management portal: users are associated with organisations upon sign-up. Administrators can be designated for each organisation, who can then control and manage users within their group. Users can also share their details if desired and explore their own and other users' saved queries

• User access to the system and datasets controlled by profiles: Super Admin has the ability to restrict access to specific datasets and fields, including spatial detail (e.g. hide geographical coordinates)

• Flexibility to add/amend datasets: Super Admin has full control of the data through the frontend. New datasets can be added to the system and made available to the users through profiles. Lookup tables can be associated with a dataset by defining the join through the frontend. The interface also allows users to hide fields from the query interface and/or the output
  
  
  
• Data Explorer, Query Builder and Map/Chart View for data analysis and reporting
  
  
  
• Customised queries: data can be explored and queried by the user based on categorical, temporal and spatial filters on single or multiple datasets at once. Queries can return data grouped or ungrouped by multiple temporal and spatial criteria. The user has the ability to save the query, join additional tables (e.g. population projections) and download the data
  
  
• Spatial filtering: based on their profile restrictions, the user can select custom spatial filters, using a mapping tool, which allows hierarchical selections through an intuitive interface
  
  
• Configurable data catalogue driving geospatial analysis and visualisation charts: users can visualise queried data directly on a map interface. Data grouped by spatial geographies (e.g. Local Authority, LSOA, etc.) can be dynamically filtered and explored both on the map and in charts. The user also has a control on certain aspects of the graphical output to export custom reports directly from the application. A proximity analysis tool allows users to find a specific location and query the database to find crime levels within a specific radius of the searched location

This project involved working with the GLA to present the findings of the Natural Capital report for London. This report highlights the enormous economic value and benefits provided by public parks and green spaces. It provides evidence for maintaining, or even increasing, investment in London’s public green spaces. To show these benefits we created a web map with a breakdown of the value of green spaces per borough. As part of this a custom UI was developed to show a table including the full breakdown of the value and a link to the appropriate borough in the report.