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Adult social care – locating vulnerable people

Local government: Citizen services

Adult social care – locating vulnerable people
 Using GIS to make the most out of our client information has enabled us to vastly improve our response to emergency incidents. The identification of vulnerable persons used to take a number of hours but this can now be achieved in just a couple of minutes.
Phil Shire, Head of Wellbeing and Social Care

At a glance

Calderdale Metropolitan Borough CouncilIn emergencies, Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council uses geographic information to reduce the time spent locating vulnerable people from four hours to just minutes.

Printable version: download PDFVisit the Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council website

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People living close to the River Calder have experienced severe flooding in recent years and local authority emergency planners were keen to see how geographic information might support the understanding of the number of properties affected, the location of vulnerable people and provide a ‘head start’ regarding the location of rest centres and the organisation of appropriate transportation.

Now if there is a flooding incident, geographical information systems (GIS) are used to give a visual and analytical overview of the properties and people affected using the Environment Agency™ flood-warning boundaries, Ordnance Survey digital maps and Calderdale Council’s Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG).

The data is securely made available to key staff that can query the location of all known vulnerable persons and this is an efficiency saving that has the potential to save lives. Without GIS, it would take four hours to cross-reference and identify the vulnerable persons already known to the council who have been affected by a given emergency.

By applying GIS and the LLPG, response time is improved dramatically, but cross-referencing is still required. By linking the council’s vulnerable persons database to GIS, results are reduced to a minute. Their MBX tool now delivers a response from multiple datasets in minutes.

Environment Agency Flood warning areas and Client data overlaid. Data extracted quickly and efficiently using spatial queries.

  • Massive time-saving locating known vulnerable citizens during emergencies.
  • Instant location of affected properties.
  • Improved location intelligence for decision-making (evacuation routes and access/rendezvous points).

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