Gatwick Airport establishes new geospatial platform

Esri UK has announced that London Gatwick has created a new geospatial platform using Esri’s ArcGIS to support multiple operational areas at the airport, including engineering and environmental services. The system is already making engineering and construction works safer by reducing accidental strikes on buried utilities and enabling better management of the airports biodiversity.

The geospatial platform contains critical infrastructure information spanning the 70-year history of the airport, including BIM, CAD, utilities, environmental, aerial photography and legacy data. By integrating all spatial data into a single view, combined with advanced spatial analysis tools, mobile apps and dashboards, the Esri platform provides new insights to support better collaboration and decision-making across the airport.

The single view of buried assets including gas, electricity, telecoms, water and fuel, is proving critical in reducing accidental damage to utilities across the 1,600-acre site. Field engineers, third party contractors and major consulting firms all use the same single view of data, accessible on any device, when planning excavations. With up to 50 engineering and construction projects on site at any one time, the new system is making work safer and reducing risk of disruption to airport operations from any unplanned outages.