Whilst the value of geospatial information is widely understood in qualitative terms, there are few studies in Europe which take a rigorous financial approach to quantification of these benefits on a National basis.  A study, commissioned by the Local Government Association (LGA) makes this assessment for one of the most influential geospatial information user communities, local public service providers, including local government, emergency and health services, in England and Wales.

Based on case studies in key application areas and applying a conservative valuation methodology, it estimates that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was approximately US $ 480m higher than would have been the case without adoption of geospatial information.  It also estimates that this figure will rise to US $ 840m by 2015 under a “business  as usual” scenario but could be increased by a further 25% with suitable policies for raising awareness, optimising access data access and better business skills amongst geospatial practitioners.

ConsultingWhere, specialist geospatial consultants led the study over a period of 6 months in early 2010. It involved extensive research into existing systems, interviews with IT staff and users, a workshop with opinion formers and a survey on barrier to adoption within the sector.  The well respected economic consultants, ACIL Tasman, who have completed similar studies in Australia and New Zealand, modelled the financial impact on the economy.   

The case studies reveal robust economic justifications in many application areas, including:

• Channel shift – through deployment of transactional web mapping systems to reduce the need for face to face contact with officials;

• Improved transport efficiency – by wider application of route optimisation and better streetworks management;

• Better decision making – using geospatially‐enabled local information systems to provide powerful “mashups” based on fine-grained statistical data for research and analysis;

• Reduced data duplication – using National “master” datasets such as the land and property gazetteer address database produced by local authorities in UK;

• Empowering frontline workers – by enhancing mobile working through rapid capture and enabling “on the spot” results;

• Helping identify social deprivation – through better data integration and analysis.

The raw analysis of return on investment from the sample studies suggests an average of cost to benefit of 1:3.75 over a 5 year period.  For the economic model input this was conservatively reduced to 1:2.5 on the basis that the case study sample had a natural bias towards more innovative and better managed projects. A detailed analysis of the value of better data sharing (based on the National Land and Property Gazetteer) shows net benefits over a 5 year period in the range US $22 million ‐ US $36 million.

Improved services also facilitated improvements in the productivity in the construction, transport and business services sectors. As a result of the accumulated effects of improved citizen and business contact with local service providers, there was also general increase in labour productivity equivalent to approximately 1,500 full time staff.    

Download the complete report: http://www.consultingwhere.com/reports.html   or http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/core/page.do?pageId=12079357