Joining the Dots

Date: 9 July 2008

The Dunedin City Council makes use of geospatial information to support a wide range of functions including property, asset management and administration. Geospatial information provides a spatial view for information enquiries and data maintenance and is key for analytical decision-making (e.g. the effect of rating changes, roading network changes and monitoring the district plan).

Geospatial technology provides integration between otherwise poorly related material like property, asset, topographic, administrative and regulatory information. All staff have Intranet enquiry access to property-based geospatial information, which is important as 80 percent of public enquiries are property-based. The DCC has a public website to display rates-based information for properties in various map contexts, a key one being aerial photographs. The DCC is also developing access to geospatial data for staff in the field. Geospatial data is managed in a central repository.

Key geospatial datasets are:

• cadastral - LINZ cadastral land parcels updated monthly
• topographic/environmental - aerial photography sourced by contract
• asset - council-maintained geospatial data relating to reticulated services, roading and reserves
• administrative - Statistics New Zealand meshblock data used to define electoral boundaries and for statistical analysis
• regulatory - council-maintained district plan information.