1. Why Geography Matters…
Stephen Russell & James Jervis
Innovation & Research – Midland Heart

2. Outline
• Putting the GI into GIS
• Data Formats
• Data Formats (2)
• Data Standards
• Interoperability
• Geospatial Analysis – hotspots
• Software packages………
• ……

3. A bit of background
• Who is Midland Heart?
• Who am I?
“..the possibilities of GIS are endless, and therein
lives its strength and weakness..”
(Bibby and Chowdry, 2001)
• It’s about Geography – where things are…
• GIS is just a tool…

4. Why GIS works for Midland Heart!
Jim

5. GIS in Midland Heart
• Sits in the research team – provides oversight of the organisation
• Desktop GIS, but an intranet GIS being developed
• A mixture of internal (asset) and ‘open’ data – from census data
through to OS OpenData.
• Internal asset data is the key source of data
• Two broad customer types:
1) Operational requests (Asset management focus)
2) Strategic requests (Research focus)

7. Open Data – the challenge…
• Where to start?
• What adds value?
• What provides insight?
• Needs to be question led…

8. Open Data – the challenge (2)…
• Plenty of information in the open domain – but still
relatively limited with regards to housing…
• NROSH?
• Clear examples where data sharing across Housing
Associations would be of a collective benefit
• Reticence due to data protection – but some barriers
are imagined…
• WMBUS – attempting to collectively address the issue of
welfare reform..

11. Questions?