DATA FOR A
DIGITAL URBAN FUTURE
As the demand for sustainable urban development grows, the public and private sector will have to step up to ensure that data and digital systems are at the heart of the design, delivery and operation of our future towns and cities. For Carter Jonas Head of Geospatial Andy Williams, this must start with a radical transformation in the way we manage and share data.
Despite the pain, Covid has provided the vital catalyst for change. It is a catalyst that can kick-start the process of transforming and modernising the way we live and work, prompting real change to the design and development of our towns and cities.
The ten months since Covid-19 swept across the UK has been a difficult and challenging time for all. But, alongside the struggles of this on-going crisis, we have also learnt a huge amount about how we want to live our lives and about our ability to adapt to change and pivot towards new solutions.
For the built environment profession, it provides a much-needed opportunity to switch our focus towards sustainable urban design. It provides a moment to fundamentally assess and transform the outdated way that the UK manages the vast amount of information on land assets; to underpin this ambition by embracing the use of digital systems and placing data at the heart of our planning, design and asset operations.
Meeting the demand for joined up data
Meeting the overriding urban development ambition remains critical. Following the Covid-19 crisis, a return to “normal” lives is unlikely, and it’s shown that remote working and reliance on technology is actually beneficial to productivity and performance. But it also demonstrated that many of our existing systems and practices are not good enough to sustain this new way of work, from IT set ups to secure collaboration tools to management and communication practices.
The UK land registration and management system is a case in point. Throughout the current development, planning and surveying world today, our operations and decisions are based largely what we’ve always done, supplemented by manually recorded information gleaned from usually out of date ‘boots on the ground’ surveys.
In a digital age, the current UK systems for recording and interrogating land use are simply not fit for purpose. The largely paper-based records mean that we cannot plot accurately who owns which piece of land and, more importantly, we cannot easily add new digital information or make changes with any degree of confidence. In a world where millimetre accuracy 3D modelling is generating vast amounts of new and updated survey information every day, our current Land Registry accuracy is simply not capable of keeping track.
As a result, the UK lacks accurate and joined-up data on existing land, property and infrastructure assets, and so finds it difficult to see the trends of how they are being used, and these are needed to assess what will be needed in future. This understanding of the needs of society is critical.
Building a smart collaborative future
The use of smart sensors and IOT (internet of things) connected devices will be increasingly vital to gaining real time information about how people currently use spaces and assets, and to identify trends for the future. It will also be critical to create the data environment capable of supporting innovations such as, for example, autonomous deliveries and vehicles, or automatic property and asset inspections.
And, while all these sensors and much of this information increasingly exists, to be truly effective we also need to have a joined-up system with the right level of detail, through which to interrogate the data.
The overwhelming issue holding back this joined-up approach to national data management is the lack of trust, cooperation and collaboration between the public sector data management organisations and private sector surveying firms. With so much valuable data being collected on a daily basis by RICS-registered surveyors, this has to change.
The reality is that much of the up-to-date information exists – surveyors carry out very detailed surveys every day, while designers and contractors add to the asset inventory almost in real time. Sadly, there is a massive mismatch in the private sector’s ability to collect, and the public sector’s ability to store this data; under the current system no one benefits from the data beyond its first use.
Aligning data to make it useful
Instead, the public sector must embrace the use of data and digital systems by developing universal standards for land and asset registry. With such a single public data standard, we would be able to break down longstanding information silos and, say, integrate building standards with land data standards to enable to planners and designers to develop urban landscapes with both land rights and air rights in mind, and a direct awareness of pollution and noise impacts. It would enable a totally collaborative design process.
Similarly, being able to interrogate a single up-to-date model would enable local authorities to harvest information from smart sensors and so understand precisely – and in real time – how much retail space is currently being used in town centres, facilitating planning decisions based on fact. Right now, this information is currently down to putting boots on the ground to check – if you can.
There will, of course, be a huge amount of sensitivity around the use of this data – mainly down to privacy issues, but also due to the challenge of matching live data with legacy information.
Taking communities on the data journey
Technology is there to solve the legacy data issue, and we will need to overcome the problem of how to cost-effectively migrate existing information to new digital modelling systems. And, while the data privacy issue is likely to be a much harder issue to solve, this interface with society will inevitably have to be constantly policed and worked on if we are to maximise the use of data and digital systems in the public realm.
In many respects it has been a success. A Carter Jonas staff survey carried out in May 2020 showed that 69% felt they were more productive working from home, 73% said that working from home had had a positive impact on the amount of exercise they did and 69% of people said that working from home had created a positive impact on their mental wellbeing.
Modern data management is the key to driving better urban regeneration,
says Simon Mole, Infrastructures Partner at Carter Jonas
“We’ve challenged ourselves as to whether online meetings are always necessary, recognising that spending long periods of time in front of a screen isn’t the most effective way for anyone to work.”
But it is clear that solving these problems and embracing this much-needed transformation will be crucial to driving investment to meet the growing demand for urban development, and boosting the UK’s levelling up agenda. The private sector must therefore step up and drive forward with investment in new digital systems that support the public sector and maximise the value of data in the planning and development space.
“the public sector must embrace the use of data and digital systems by developing universal standards for land and asset registry"
Our urban town centres are often fragmented with multiple ownerships, complex lease structures, unidentified air rights and other surface and sub-surface easements – often to parties who are extremely difficult to trace. The reality is that our current system of recording this information on the HM Land Registry database is too often out of date, creating a discrepancy between the registered owner and the actual party in control of the assets.
It is likely that the fabric of town centres will move away from traditional retail towards a more sustainable mix of residential, flexible retail and leisure offers, together with other major development which will benefit from a location close to existing and future public transport links.
As our urban centres move towards recovering from the Covid-19 crisis, with a drive to use Government initiatives as such the Future High Streets Fund, it is critical that local authorities can identify and work with all the land and property owners within the high street.
Virtual
training and
staff
development
Creating sustainable futures that meet the needs of the community will be complex and will require landowners, occupiers, utility companies and other right holders to work together to make difficult decisions, perhaps ultimately seeing ownerships transfer into single entities.
An open public register to manage all our land and assets is a critical community resource. But this should not be considered as an isolated public asset. Instead, this record should be assembled using a public data standard, managed by the public sector but, crucially, contributed to and financed by the private sector.
Reform of the way we gather, store and interrogate the vast amount of information at the heart of these decisions is central to helping this array of stakeholders to work collaboratively and, ultimately, to find the best ways to transform our urban environment to the benefit of future generations. The time for this transformation has surely arrived.
standards to enable to planners and designers to develop urban landscapes with both land rights and air rights in mind, and a direct awareness of pollution and noise impacts. It would enable a totally collaborative design process.
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The overwhelming issue holding back this joined-up approach to national data management is the lack of trust, cooperation and collaboration between the public sector data management organisations and private sector surveying firms. With so much valuable data being collected on a daily basis by RICS-registered surveyors this has to change.
Creating sustainable futures that meet the needs of the community will be complex and will require landowners, occupiers, utility companies and other right holders to work together to make difficult decisions, perhaps ultimately seeing ownerships transfer into single entities.