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This case study explores how Plymouth Community Homes (PCH), a social housing provider, successfully implemented QGIS as their primary GIS application, resulting in increased user base and improved data management capabilities.
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The Adoption of QGIS at Plymouth Community Homes John Yates – Senior IT Business Analyst / Project Manager Brian London – IT Application Support Analyst
Who are we? • We are a Social Housing provider in Plymouth with approximately 19,500 properties (Private tenancies and Leasehold) • PCH formed following property transfer from Plymouth City Council in 2010
A bit of background . . . • I started at PCH in May 2014 • One of my initial tasks was to undertake a “drains-up” of PCH’s GIS use • Initial findings indicated somewhat rudimentary use of an application called GGP • 10 x user licences • No real application ownership • Lack of training / investment etc
How did PCH become aware of QGIS? • GGP Account Mgr referred me to the IT Department at PCC to understand their use of GGP • Established that PCC were becoming less reliant on GGP and had since started using an open source GIS application . . . . QGIS! • Free • Provided more powerful data / spatial analysis tools than GGP
What happened next? • With the help of PCH’s Asset Manager, we developed a vision of how GIS could be used across PCH • Brian was tasked with getting under the bonnet of QGIS and understanding what made it tick • The results were ground-breaking (for PCH!) • The next few slides illustrate how PCH have leveraged the power and capability of QGIS . . .
Asset & HMS Data Creation of spatial SQL tables by adding Eastings and Northings • Used QT Designer to create user friendly tabulated forms to display data • Made data “Read-Only” to ensure that core systems were used to update information • Added Title Deed data from Land Registry • Uploaded tree data from PCH’s cloud-based tree management system • Estates teams using QGIS to ID areas of shared / sole responsibility to help avoid disputes!
2014 vs 2016 • As of September 2016 . . . • Approximately 75 users of QGIS (vs 10 occasional users of GGP) • User base has tripled since Jan 2016 • Dedicated GIS User Group intranet site • Greater use by Estates teams who are creating their own layers • Use Open map data to avoid issues with OS MasterMaplicencing • Use of Open Data provided by PCC • The Future . . . • Designated GIS officers to undertake GIS data admin tasks • Web based maps to allow users to: • access map data from hand-held devices • tenants to access information via self-service portal and this includes data such as amenities, libraries etc.
Thank you! • Any questions . . . ?