Aligned Assets Present a Practical Strategy for Adopting AddressBase Premium

SURREY, ENGLAND, January 09, 2013 (Press-News.org) Gazetteer specialists Aligned Assets have released guidance to assist both public sector and private sector organisations in implementing AddressBase Premium from the Ordnance Survey.

With the majority of existing datasets such as AddressPoint, AddressLayer 2 and the NLPG being withdrawn in 2014, the document draws on the necessity for organisations to act sooner rather than later in their migration to AddressBase Premium.

Titled 'A Practical Strategy for Implementing AddressBase Premium', the document demonstrates how any organisation can start using AddressBase Premium without the immediate need to change their existing systems over to AddressBase-compatible versions.

It is these existing systems that present the main obstacle to change as they are often large, complex and critical to the organisation, yet will be based on older address datasets or sometimes no structured dataset at all. It is this issue that the document looks to address.

Andy Hird, Managing Director of Aligned Assets, explained more, "The process described involves initially bringing AddressBase Premium into an organisation and access being given to it via a browser based search engine. With this, technical staff can begin to familiarise themselves with the format and structure of the data, whilst non-technical staff can begin to adapt to elements such as UPRNs and property classifications."

"Once in place, the process would move to using Aligned Assets' data conversion software, Symphony iExchange, which can take AddressBase Premium and convert it into standard and non-standard formats. In doing so, changes to the AddressBase Premium data can be exported to the non-AddressBase systems, thereby keeping them updated."

"This gives an organisation the benefits of AddressBase Premium but in a staged and controlled manner that does not result in major upheaval, and buys time for other suppliers to modify their systems to take native AddressBase data."

'A Practical Strategy for Implementing AddressBase Premium' is available as a free download via the Aligned Assets website and is relevant to the emergency services, local and central government, the NHS and organisations across the private sector such as insurance, utilities and banking.

To find out more, visit http://www.aligned-assets.co.uk or email solutions@aligned-assets.co.uk.

ABOUT ALIGNED ASSETS
Aligned Assets are an industry leader in AddressBase, gazetteer and address management solutions. They supply software across the public and private sectors including over 100 Local Authorities, Fire & Rescue Services and Police Forces. In addition to software and data solutions, they offer a complete range of consultancy, training, bespoke development and project management.

ABOUT THE ADDRESSBASE PRODUCTS
AddressBase contains Royal Mail PAF addresses, both commercial and residential matched to the local authority Unique Property Reference Number (UPRN) and structured in a flat file model. You will be able to link additional information about a property to a single address. It also provides further enhancement to the Royal Mail PAF data by assigning an X and Y coordinate to every address, allowing you to place it precisely on a map, together with a summary classification.

AddressBase Plus contains current properties and addresses sourced from local authorities, Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail matched to the UPRN and structured in a flat file model. It has more records than AddressBase as it includes objects without postal addresses such as places of worship and community centres and objects in multiple occupancy buildings. It also enables you to locate an address or property precisely on a map, by cross referencing to the information in OS MasterMap products via the OS MasterMap Topography Layer and Integrated Transport Network (ITN) Layer Topographic Identifiers (TOID s).

AddressBase Premium provides the most detailed view of an address and its lifecycle. It contains all the AddressBase Plus information and functionalities, such as the ability to cross reference the information with OS MasterMap products via the OS MasterMap Topography Layer and Integrated Transport Network (ITN) Layer Topographic Identifiers (TOIDs).
But the real benefit of this product is that it provides a range of information relating to an address or property from creation to retirement or demolition. It contains local authority, Ordnance Survey and Royal Mail addresses structured in a relational database model. The product is based around the UPRN, the current (approved) addresses; and alternatives for current addresses (reflecting the changes in addresses); provisional addresses (proposed planning developments) and historic information for addresses (including historic alternatives) where available.

The AddressBase products are created by GeoPlace, a public liability partnership between Local Government Association and Ordnance Survey.