Shropshire County, England, Picks GIS for Community and Environmental Services

Sandwiched between quaint Welsh villages to the west and England's primary north/south highway corridor to the east, Shropshire County has unique land use considerations. To help resolve conflicts and provide better service to its residents, the council recently selected Esri (UK) Ltd. to supply the software for its corporate GIS. The council will use a wide range of Esri's GIS software to implement client/server, Intranet, and desktop applications.

The council will use Esri's ArcView GIS, ArcView Network Analyst, ArcView Spatial Analyst, and ArcView 3D Analyst software, together with the Spatial Database Engine (SDE) running with Microsoft SQL Server andMapObjects. In addition, Shropshire County Council will utilize Esri (UK)'s free, downloadable MapExplorer software, a UK-specific version of Esri's ArcExplorer for those users who only need limited access to the Ordinance Survey (OS) map base and other corporate GIS data.

Comments Peter Bingham, information development officer in the Environment Department, "We are introducing Esri's GIS software as our corporatewide GIS. It will be used to assist with the full range of community, environmental, and lifetime learning services provided by the county council."

The council had a two-stage GIS strategy, explained Bingham. The first was to introduce a low-cost desktop system for OS map management and production, which was implemented in 1994.

"The second stage was to look at the wider GIS requirements of the County," Bingham continued. "Following the preparation of a full specification that went to tender, Esri (UK) best met our requirements. We will be using GIS as a tool for sharing a wide range of geographically referenced data across the authority."

For more information, contact Roy Laming (e-mail: rlaming@esriuk.com).

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