Landgate has developed a Sustainable Data and Product Management Framework that streamlines geographic data collection, maintenance, cartographic enhancement, map revision and product development. The program of work currently being undertaken, combined with the implementation of new techniques, will allow Landgate to update its digital data products in real time.
Sustainability is achieved by integrating work flows, automating existing tasks and encouraging customer participation at each stage of the product lifecycle.
The framework provides the flexibility to create a broad range of products and delivery formats and enables timely delivery of products and spatial updates to market.
Currently, map production is resource intensive and time consuming, and the information collected is trapped in formats that prevent it from easily being used in other products and applications. Work flows are divided and therefore difficult to manage, and data currency is inconsistent across the agency's data sets and products.
To address these issues, the Sustainable Data and Product Management Framework incorporates timely data collection techniques, a multipurpose geographic knowledge-base, automated mapping techniques, and a new Dynamic Spatial Updating (DSU) process.
The overarching philosophy is to capture geographic features and real world concepts once only; and use this geographical knowledge to create multiple map products in a variety of formats, themes and scales.
The Dynamic Spatial Updating process is central to delivering the automated components of the Sustainable Data and Product Management Framework. DSU refers to the techniques, spatial queries and algorithms that are applied to automate map product revision.