The British Transport Police (BTP) has embarked on a program to automate the audit and repair of their incident database addresses by indexing them against the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) and other address files. This allows them to quantify the quality of their location data and identify matches. Rules are then used to evaluate unmatched data and populate the index, grouping locations into themes. The results provide BTP with reliable location data that can save time and lives by enabling correct incident response, resource allocation, and reporting.

1. Addressing the Problems of Addressing at British Transport Police Richard R. Smith, Force Information Manager, British Transport Police Bob Chell, Principal Consultant, 1Spatial Group Ltd

4. UK Location Strategy Place Matters. Everything happens somewhere. If we can get a better understanding on this we can make better use of resources, improve planning and advance our management of risk. There is too much data duplication, too little reuse, too few linkages across datasets to support policy implementation. This is particularly true for the emergency services, where inaccurate data can result in lives being put at risk.

5. Command and Control

9. Non-Suspicious Death

14. The Problems of Addressing A root cause of these inaccuracies is the multiple sources of event data and often conflicting address databases in use, such as NLPG, AL2 and PAF. There is an initiative (NESG) to produce a reliable, common address gazetteer for the emergency services, which will overcome many of these problems. However, there is an immediate need for individual forces to maintain their own address database or gazetteer now. This is for both incident response and to provide accurate mapping in support of intelligence generation, resource planning and many other activities.

15. Addressing the Problem British Transport Police (BTP) has recently embarked on a programme to automate the audit and repair of their incident database in relation to the NLPG and other address files. BTP have been able quantify the quality of data held within their Gazetteer, which is core to providing location information to any Officer responding to an Incident on the Railway. After the audit, the same technology will be used to provide ongoing validation and ensure data integrity and reliability.

17. Master Data Management BTP have achieved this by generating a baseline of information based on the NLPG and NSG against their Location Gazetteer. A rule-based approach has been taken to evaluate the data and build this baseline. In effect, they have generated a master index of their Location Gazetteer. This index provides a complete and consistently assembled view of what is happening and where.

18. Digital National Framework

19. BTP indexed with against NLPG Not Matched / Matched

20. BTP indexed with against NLPG and NSG Not Matched / Matched

21. BTP Location Gazetteer Names

22. Where Am I?

23. The NLPG and NSG

24.   Matching Process to Populate the Index DN8 4HZ POST_CODE DONCASTER POST_TOWN FIELDSIDE STREET RAILSTN TYPE THORNE NORTH RAILWAY STATION LOCATION VALUE ATTRIBUTE POST_CODE DONCASTER POST_TOWN STREET THORNE NORTH RAILSTN LOCATION VALUE ATTRIBUTE

25. BTP Impact Assessment The BTP Locations are first analysed to understand the quality (completeness and logical consistency) of the data. It allows us to make a baseline assessment of the information. Business rules check different address characteristics of the data, focussing on the address-related elements such as Street Name, Postcode and Post Town .

27. Populating the Index using Rules If NOT IN THE INDEX or PART OF THEME Then perform the necessary conditional checks If the checks are true then populate the index

28. Postcode Street Geo Postcode Geo Street Geo Geo Only Populating the Index with Confidence - Confidence +

29. Populating the Index using Workflow Workflow media player controls Cut, copy, delete and re-order tasks

30. BTP Baseline Assessment

31. Index Overview with Confidence

32. BTP Content, Update Less than 10% of the data matches the NLPG or NSG But we have matched 60-85% of the data, with confidence BTP NLPG

33. BTP Content, Append Less than 20% of the data even contains a Street Name… … similar characteristics for Postcode and Post Town ??? But we have matched 60-85% of the data, with confidence BTP NLPG