Developing tools to improve land use decision making in the UK

Land is finite, yet it faces rising demands for many different purposes. It is the silent partner in many of the most important policy debates today. Addressing key targets for housing, food, water, renewable energy, climate change adaptation, and environmental protection requires well-coordinated decisions that take into account the spatial and systemic effects of land use changes. In the UK, populations are growing and their lifestyles are changing all at the same time as climate change is fundamentally altering local landscapes and biodiversity. With these social, cultural, and economic dynamics come new challenges in land use management and decision-making.

This is why the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC) is working with the Geospatial Commission to develop a better and more inclusive way of making land use decisions. A pilot project in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough is exploring how a more comprehensive Land Use Framework could work with local leaders and citizens, leaning on significant input from a broad range of stakeholders across national, regional, and local levels. The pilot aims to address specific local and regional changes by hosting stakeholder engagement events on key land use issues and designing an interactive prototype decision support tool to address local land use challenges.

Vizzuality is supporting the pilot by designing a prototype visualisation tool to provide local stakeholders with a visual place from which to prompt conversations about land use challenges and to widen their access to previously insularly held datasets. The goal is to assess how data visualisation and analysis can support individuals and organisations responsible for governing, owning, managing, and utilising land to make more effective and better informed land use decisions.

Stakeholder engagement

“Improving land use decisions in the UK is a huge task and needs to bring as many people, from as many different sectors, together to change business as usual,” explained Vizzuality’s Community Lead, Hannah Thomas.

This is why Vizzuality’s goal for the pilot project is to provide a clear and accessible service that brings together stakeholders involved in land use decision-making, even those without expertise in data analysis, and to stimulate important land use planning conversations.

The Geospatial Commission’s new video illustrates how the prototype visualisation tool developed by Vizzuality can support the GC’s and the FFCC’s efforts to facilitate local land use decision-making.

Richard Kay, Manager of Planning Policy and Environment Lead of the East Cambridgeshire District Council, explained how such a service will enable decision-makers to take a holistic view and promote cross-sector collaboration while making the most effective use of the data.

“I think it would be really helpful to have a centralised place for data and information, at least at the county level. It would help us shift from asking ‘which location will cause the least harm?’ to ‘which location has the most potential for making the greatest contribution to a particular policy objective?’, whether that’s tree planting, biodiversity, or new housing. This would include up to date, free to access, high quality data, covering things like key nature sites, flood risk, water quality and information about agricultural land. If these and other important considerations were mapped out, it would help local authorities and other stakeholders make quicker and better informed decisions about land use.”

The prototype integrates different land cover and land use data layers into a user-friendly platform, displaying information on agriculture, flood risk, development sites, and conservation areas.

Housing and water: Helping people understand the challenges involved in providing an adequate housing supply that avoids unsustainable pressure on Cambridgeshire’s important natural chalk aquifers and globally rare chalk stream habitats. Housing and farming: Cambridgeshire has some of the highest grade farmland in the UK, but is also a world-renowned hub for biotech and pharmaceuticals. As a result, farmland essential for food production and wildlife will be transformed to meet the growing demand for housing. Robust data on indicators such as soil quality and nature restoration potential will help the community in their assessment of benefits and tradeoffs. Nature, energy and farming: Some farmers in Cambridgeshire are keen to explore different economic models for their land and to explore data on how land use could shift from a production landscape to incorporating renewable energies and nature restoration.

Next steps

“Developing a tool to support the framework is a real challenge because land use change involves so many complex spatial issues, but we were really conscious that we form the conversational bridge between stakeholders,“ said Thomas.

The conversations emerging from the Cambridgeshire pilot demonstrated that stakeholders see significant value in user-friendly data visualisations to facilitate discussions about land use changes, aid internal collaboration, support public engagement, and inform planning decisions.

“It is clearer than ever that we need a coherent land use planning tool,” wrote the FFCC’s Countryside and Land Use Programme Lead Georgie Barber in her blog on the multiple benefits of a Land Use Framework emphasising that many local authorities are interested in creating local land use frameworks. This also means that a future tool needs to be able to synthesise and present data from multiple sectors in an accessible manner and that standardisation, consistency, and regular maintenance of spatial data and open source GIS features will be crucial for maximising the prototype’s benefits.

Dame Fiona Reynolds, FFCC Commissioner and co-chair of the Cambridgeshire pilot, echoed these sentiments. She believes the prototype holds significant potential to be expanded beyond the county in support of a national Land Use Framework.

“It was great to work with Vizzuality to develop a tool that could provide the basis for ‘larger than local’ land use frameworks across the country,” she said. “Layering data that isn’t usually seen together is illuminating and enlightening, and the tool is intuitive and easy to use.”

This article was written by Vizzuality’s Alexander Wowra with support from the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission’s Vicente Macia-Kjaer and Vizzuality’s Hannah Thomas.