Seminar Seeks to Explore the Potential of GIS in Social Housing

Key decisionmakers from the housing and technology sector will come together in Birmingham later this year to explore the positive benefits of GIS (geographic information systems) in the social housing sector.

Hosted by managed service provider ODCGIS, the free-to-attend, in-person event is designed to enable GIS specialists and social housing experts to meet and discuss how innovative location-based approaches support essential management priorities.

Delegates will share and learn about practical applications of GIS for core responsibilities such as asset and risk management, grounds maintenance, sustainability and decarbonisation, strategic planning, data intelligence and operational efficiency.

“We aim to facilitate useful insight and help attendees make valuable connections with fellow sector organisations,” said Rick Thompson, Director of Operations at ODCGIS. “It’s an ideal opportunity to explore how GIS is transforming social housing through practical insight, real-world case studies and peer networking.

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“We’ll look at how GIS supports both strategic and tactical decisions while delivering quantifiable returns on investment.”

The seminar comes amid particularly strong GIS growth in the UK driven over the past decade by digital transformation strategies, open government data, advances in satellite imagery and drones, cloud computing and, most recently, AI-enabled spatial analytics.

The government has made geospatial data a strategic priority through initiatives such as the UK’s geospatial strategy and investment in national location data infrastructure.

As a result, GIS is now embedded in activities from planning infrastructure and managing utilities to retail site selection and emergency response.

In social housing, the technology is increasingly seen as a core business platform for managing property portfolios, coordinating maintenance, supporting regulatory compliance and informing investment decisions.

Among ODCGIS clients, housing association bpha, located in the Oxford to Cambridge arc, has used spatial data to create an ‘insurance map’ to identify properties at risk of flooding or subsidence.

At the same time, Derby City Council housing management subsidiary Derby Homes has put hi-res aerial photography into its GIS to assess the suitability of around 8,000 properties for integrated solar PV systems. The actionable insight has led to 2,000 systems being readied for implementation.

Rick added: “As environmental reporting requirements and data-driven asset management become more important, GIS is likely to become even more deeply embedded in UK social housing organisations. Now is the time for housing professionals to network with each other and learn about applying best practice. The seminar will help attendees achieve this goal face to face.”

The seminar follows a similar ODCGIS event held last year that brought together more than 100 delegates from 57 housing associations.

In a follow-up review, Steve Litchfield, GIS Manager at Coventry-based Orbit Group, said: “It was great to hear how other housing associations are using GIS and to compare with where we are. It’s fantastic to see best practice, not only within housing associations but with the technology itself.”

And fellow attendee Barry Stevens, Director of Asset Management and Development at Bromsgrove District Housing Trust, said: “It was really useful, informative and educational for me, and a great all-around day, particularly understanding where others are in their GIS and data journey.”

Already scheduled to give presentations this October are representatives from housing associations including A2 Dominion, a 70-year-old provider managing more than 38,000 properties in London and southern England, and Beyond Housing, which operates across Redcar, Cleveland and North Yorkshire and serves 30,000 residents.

While Mark Bishop, A2 Dominion’s Head of Asset Strategy, will discuss how to create a business case for GIS, two speakers from Beyond Housing – Neighbourhoods Investment Manager Blake Lee-Woodward and Asset Data Performance Manager Sam Duncan – will focus respectively on the organisation’s GIS ‘journey’ and its role in enabling estate insights.

Also on the agenda is a presentation from Shaun Minton, Asset Strategy Project Lead at Liverpool’s Regenda Group, on how climate and heat risk data from provider Map Impact, coupled with data from the National Geospatial Database, can inform retrofit decisions at individual property level.

Among other agenda items confirmed so far are presentations on the use of GIS for community insights and asset strategies and how unique property reference numbers, or UPRNs, support data governance.

Founded in 1994, based in Bampton, Oxfordshire, and a licensed partner of both Great Britain’s national mapping agency, Ordnance Survey, and HM Land Registry, ODCGIS provides GIS data and consultancy services to housing associations that are together responsible for more than a million properties, around a third of the UK’s entire housing association stock.