Brownfield data: Can We Do Better?

As reported in March, Modern Maps proprietor Tony Vickers will have a major role in a study for the UK Government's regeneration agency English Partnerships on the future of the National Land Use Database (NLUD) of Previously Developed Land (PDL). The study was expected to commence in February but there was a hitch in pre-contract administration which meant that work is only just starting in earnest.

Kingston University is now able to issue a Press Release
on the award of the contract. This confirms Vickers' role as Researcher and sets out Kingston's approach to the study.

Over 450 local planning authority chiefs in England will shortly receive an invitation to complete an online questionnaire. Project Director Professor Sarah Sayce, who has been Vickers' PhD Director of Studies, has said that she believes one reason Kingston's tender bid was successful was his current active involvement in local planning, as an elected councillor who deals everyday with land use information and planning policy decisions locally.

Vickers is also a Director (non-executive) of the Association for Geographic Information, which wishes to actively support the study. The great majority of AGI members will be affected by developments in NLUD. AGI's current Chair and Director of the GeoInformation Group - a leading supplier of land use related imagery and other data to local authorities - is a consultant to the Kingston Study Team.

The rather dry formal title of the project has been replaced by one that will be used in publicity:
Brownfield Data: can we do better?

In his book Location Matters: Recycling Britain's Wealth, out now from Shepheard-Walwyn (specialist publishers on ethical economics) Vickers alludes to the need for better land information and the fact that this year's EU INSPIRE Directive....

may provide the regulatory stimulus for us to obtain all the information needed to derive land value....