Articles

DNF Enables Mapping Project Success

Black & Veatch scored a notable double at the tenth annual Information Management awards (IM2005) by winning the prestigious Premier Project Award and the coveted GIS Project Prize for its outstanding work on the Countryside Agency’s Mapping Access Land Project.

IM2005 recognises excellence and innovation in the management of business information and is a showcase for organisations that have demonstrated the vision and the business skills to implement new technology to reap business benefits.

The Project

The five year project, commonly known as the “Right to Roam” project, was designed to implement the Government’s Countryside and Rights of Way Act (2000) that granted a new right of access to open country and registered common land for walkers to enjoy.

Black and Veatch was commissioned by the Countryside Agency to develop the methodology, IT systems and procedures to intelligently analyse over 350 existing datasets to identify and draw maps of these new access areas. Using OS MasterMap as a reference base it was the first extensive use of the Digital National Framework (DNF), a set of enabling principles and operational rules that underpin and facilitate the integration of geographic information (GI) from multiple sources. In so doing, Black & Veatch produced the first legal statutory map in digital form, identifying one million hectares (approximately 7% of England) as open country or registered common land, both accessible to the public.