Background
The UK government’s Geospatial Commission has published a call for evidence on geospatial opportunities across the the economy. This is our response. In it we:
- Focus on geospatial reference data – things like address data, unique identifiers, and official registers – rather than the broader topic of location data.
- Highlight the global trend towards open and collaboratively maintained datasets, such as in the OpenStreetMap ecosystem, a trend that the government is falling to embrace.
- Highlight existing issues around accessibility, interoperability, reuseability and a lack of the collaboration that can improve quality.
- Recommend that rather than focussing on technology the Geospatial Commission limit its work to providing data to people who need it to tackle problems relevant to society and the economy.
- Recommend that the Geospatial Commission publish existing evidence held by goverment on the costs and benefits of opening up geospatial datasets.
Call for evidence response
We welcome the opportunity to respond to this call for evidence. Our response is focussed on geospatial reference data.
The Geospatial Commission’s definition of location data is broad and has significant overlaps with other areas of policy and regulatory responsibility. This complicates geospatial data policy and makes it difficult to effect change across either the Geospatial Commission’s 6 partner bodies (the Geo6) or other organisations that create or gather geospatial reference data.
Our definition of geospatial reference data is a subset of the Geospatial Commission’s definition of location data. Within this definition we include:
- Geospatial datasets – The core data assets of the UK’s geospatial data infrastructure that underpin our understanding of the natural and man-made landscape around us and how we interact with it. It includes data on land cover, height, geology, habitats, water resources, geographic and political boundaries, structures, addresses, utilities and transport networks. For example Ordnance Survey’s MasterMap or the UK Hydrographic Office’s Bathymetric Survey.
- Identifiers – that provide unambiguous labels or reference numbers for the things described in a geospatial dataset, such as lamp-posts, roads, houses, or administrative Areas. Unique Property Reference Numbers (UPRNs) are an example of an identifier.
- Registers – official lists of reference data that help to improve the consistency and quality in how data is published and used. For example the Land Registry register of property titles, or the Postal Address File (PAF).
Organisations in other regulatory and policy domains – such as housing, health, or education – combine this geospatial reference data with other data for use in their activities.
Q1: Which changes or trends over the last five years do you think have had the biggest impact on the use of location data (e.g. market conditions, consumer behaviour, technological advancements)?
In 2018 the Open Data Institute published a report on geospatial reference data providing evidence for the following trends at a global level:
- The increasing trend of government mapping agencies publishing geospatial reference data as open data
- That non-government actors, such as businesses and communities, were becoming more important in collecting and maintaining geospatial data
- The growth in new data collection methods, such as satellites and LiDAR systems
- Continuing advances in analytics and extraction techniques, such as AI/ML models
- That the growth of digital services would see an increasing amount of linkage between geospatial reference data and people
- That some of the most accurate mapping data was now held within commercial organisations and that their services would see increasing use
Although the UK’s mapping agencies have not kept pace with other countries in publishing open data, the rest of the trends apply to the UK as much as they do other countries.
We suspect that the growth in awareness of the concept of “digital twins” may also have had an impact at the UK level.
Q2: Which changes or trends do you anticipate having the biggest impact on the use of location data in the next five years?
We anticipate that the growth of open and collaboratively maintained geospatial reference data, such as in the ecosystem surrounding OpenStreetMap will have the biggest impact in the next five years. This ecosystem includes governments, communities, startups and large global firms like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft.
As the UK’s geospatial agencies are not currently embracing open data at the same pace as most other high-income countries, then effects of this trend are likely to be different within the UK than they will be elsewhere.
It seems likely that the result of this trend is that the UK will see greater use of alternative geospatial reference data created within commercial organisations (such as What3Words or Google), with a corresponding decrease in the share of usage of official geospatial reference data created by the UK’s national agencies.
This increase in dominance of commercial mapping companies will have an impact on the ecosystem and on the critical data infrastructure that people rely on in their day-to-day lives.
The impacts are varied and complex, for example a private sector firm could:
- decide to stop providing high-quality reference data in unprofitable parts of the market, or country, leaving places or people underserved. A public sector organisation delivering public services will have differing incentives when faced with such a challenge.
- use a dominant position in the geospatial reference data market to provide it with a unfair advantage in other market segments, this could hinder effective competition and create worse outcomes for people and society. The 2019 Furman Review recommended greater data openness as one way of overcoming this kind of competition issue, if it is allowed to arise.
Q3: Do you have any comment on this characterisation of the ecosystem, and is there anything you would add, remove or change?
Compared to other data value chain frameworks, specifically the GSMA data value chain and the data value chain used by the OECD’s digital government team, the Geospatial Commission’s framework misses a few activities.
Data generators: geospatial reference data is collected through a range of non-geospatial services with input from humans, devices and systems. For example logistics firms collect addresses from their users, while sports apps and devices – such as Strava and Garmin – collect information about places.
Data exchange: geospatial reference data is packaged and traded in a number of different ways. For example the Ordnance Survey, the Royal Mail, and a number of other private sector firms sell a range of datasets derived from geospatial reference data produced by the public sector.
Regulatory bodies: the data value chain misses the role of regulation and regulatory bodies in supporting the data value chain, for example the INSPIRE and RoPSI regulations, the Data Protection Act, the Information Commissioner’s Office, and a wide range of sectoral regulations and regulators.
Q4: How integral is location data to your or your organisation’s activities? [Select one from the following list]
+ Core to what we do
+ Part of what we do
+ We do not make use of location data
Geospatial reference data is part of what we do.
Q5: Which section(s) of the data value chain does your organisation operate in? [For each section of the value chain select “Core to what we do / Part of what we do / Not part of what we do”]
Each of us works across the data value chain and geospatial reference data is part of what we do.
Q6: What are the main blockers for you or your organisation in using location data to achieve your objectives? [Please rate the importance of the following: (high/medium/low/unsure/not applicable) - closed question]
Findability of data –
Accessibility of data – HIGH
Interoperability of data – MEDIUM
Reusability of data – MEDIUM
Lack of awareness and/or difficulty communicating about location data
Privacy laws and/or ethical considerations for the use of location data
Geospatial skills (e.g. surveying, GIS)
Wider data skills (e.g. data science)
Funding
Other (please specify)
Collaboration – MEDIUM
Any additional comments?
The main blocker is poor accessibility due to a combination of the cost of access and licensing for geospatial reference data that is created by the public sector. The UK differs from most other high-income countries in not making this data available as open data.
This accessibility issue stems from the business model that the central government has mandated for the UK’s national mapping agencies, i.e. that they should generate direct revenue by selling data, rather than maximise economic and social impact by providing access to data.
These accessibility issues affect interoperability and reusability. This manifests in issues such as the low usage of UPRNs (Unique Property Reference Numbers) across both public and private sector organisations. UPRNs are identifiers that could provide significant interoperability benefits.
UPRNs themselves are highly accessible but the UK’s address-UPRN mapping tables are only available for a fee and with restrictive licensing conditions. This has contributed to low UPRN adoption rates with no visible plan to understand and address the issue.
Meanwhile the restrictive licensing conditions and uncertainties caused by the grey areas in derived database rights, hinder reusability. Organisations are often unsure whether they can reuse geospatial reference data and for what purposes they could reuse it for. This particularly affects business innovation with geospatial reference data.
Finally, we would highlight collaboration and maintenance. In our research around address data we have heard multiple stories of people and businesses struggling with incomplete and inaccurate address data, but with no clear path to resolving the issues.
This indicates that there are specific issues around responsibility and accountability within the address data ecosystems, but it also highlights a lack of a collaborative approach to improving data quality across the broader geospatial reference data ecosystem.
More collaborative ecosystems – such as OpenStreetMap, or those generated by the real-time feedback loops within platforms like Google Maps and Waze – can make it easier to resolve such problems as they provide a greater number of methods for issue resolution.
Q7: Are there any additional blockers, beyond those you have identified in the previous question, that prevent the application of location data across the wider economy? [Please rate the importance of any additional blockers: (high/medium/low/unsure) - closed question]
Findability of data
Accessibility of data
Interoperability of data
Reusability of data
Lack of awareness or difficulty communicating about location data
Ethics in the use of location data
Geospatial skills (e.g. surveying, GIS)
Wider data skills (e.g. data science)
Funding
Other (please specify)
Any additional comments?
No response
Q8: Which technologies are likely to be the most important for you or your organisation when using or innovating with location data over the next five years? [Please rate the importance of the following: (high/medium/low/unsure/not applicable) - closed question]
Artificial intelligence/Machine learning
Automation and robotics
Geo-Building Information Modelling (BIM)
Digital twins
Visualisation and immersive tech (AR/VR/MR)
Internet of Things
Satellite and airborne remote sensing (including earth observation)
Cloud computing
Crowd-sourced data
Miniaturisation of new sensors
Quantum computing
Edge computing
Other (please specify)
Any additional comments?
We expect to work across all of these technologies/technological domains, and others, in the coming years.
Q9: Which technologies should the UK prioritise development for to provide new opportunities to process and exploit location data for economic growth over the next five years? [Please rate the importance of the following: (high/medium/low/unsure) - closed question]
Artificial intelligence/Machine learning
Automation and robotics
Geo-Building Information Modelling (BIM)
Digital twins
Visualisation and immersive tech (AR/VR/MR)
Internet of Things
Satellite and airborne remote sensing (including earth observation)
Cloud computing
Crowd-sourced data
Miniaturisation of new sensors
Quantum computing
Edge computing
Other (please specify)
Prioritising in this manner does not seem helpful. Geospatial reference data should be useable across a wide range of technologies and business domains. Each of these technologies, and domains, contains a wide range of overlapping geospatial reference data use cases in a number of sectors. These technologies will evolve rapidly over the next five years.
Rather than prioritising a particular technology, or technological domain, we recommend that the Geospatial Commission identify problems that are relevant to society and the economy and limit its own work to ensuring that geospatial reference data is available, at an appropriate quality, for geospatial reference data users who are tackling those problems.
For example, this might mean ensuring that there is free and openly available geospatial reference data available for use in house planning and development, health services, public procurement, or tackling economic crime.
Q10: Please give specific examples of how the UK public sector / the Geospatial Commission can support innovative applications of location data with these technologies? [Open question]
No response.
Q11: Please give specific examples of where location data and technology could be transformational in sectors across the economy. What scale of economic, social and/or environmental impact do you anticipate as a result? [Open question]
Publishing the UK’s geospatial reference data under an open licence – with a comprehensive national dataset available from an appropriate public body that has a statutory duty to make the data available and is funded by central government to do so – would be the most transformational step that could be taken.
Most other Northern and Western European countries are moving in this direction as they have determined that the economic, social and environmental benefits outweigh the costs. This work typically occurs within their digital government transformation programmes.
To take just one dataset and one country, Denmark saw a 30-to-1 financial benefit-to-cost ratio when it opened up address data.
We are aware that parts of the UK government disagree with this step. Unfortunately the reasoning and evidence behind their disagreements are not in the public domain.
In 2016 the UK Government spent up to £5m exploring options for an open address register. The information about the benefits and costs of such a register that was collected during this project has not been made publicly available.
The Geospatial Commission has informed us that while preparing the 2020 Geospatial Strategy it did not assess the potential social and economic benefits of such a step, or collect information about the volumes and type of geospatial-related issues that affect citizens when using public services.
Collecting and publishing the evidence held by the government would help create a more informed policy debate both inside and outside the government.
Q12: How could you or your organisation contribute to driving better awareness of the value of geospatial? [Open question]
We already work on this awareness. If the UK’s geospatial reference data was more accessible, interoperable and reusable then it could be used to tackle more problems and we would raise more awareness of its value.
Q13: Please give specific examples of effective collaboration to deliver geospatial applications, and the type of people or organisations that do, or could, collaborate. (Please include international collaboration if appropriate)
The world’s most impactful collaboration to deliver geospatial applications is the OpenStreetMap ecosystem.
The OpenStreetMap Foundation is legally based in the UK, but it acts and operates globally and has millions of contributors including individuals, communities, governments, startups and global businesses.
We recommend that the Geospatial Commission engage with the OpenStreetMap community to understand the drivers behind this success and how they could either emulate it within the UK or join with the global OpenStreetMap ecosystem.
