A new indoor mapping system developed by the University of Oxford will upgrade the university’s estate management processes to provide efficient methods of maintaining asset data. The system will offer easy access to property and interiors data across 300+ buildings and 35,000 spaces using interactive maps.
The university chose GIS mapping technology from Esri UK to build the new system, which went live recently. Replacing manual processes, static CAD floorplan drawings and Excel spreadsheets, the new indoor mapping system combines over 2,000 CAD floorplans into a single interactive map.
A two-way communication tool has also been introduced, so any modifications to lecture theatres, accommodation or classrooms can be easily fed back to the estates team online, replacing a labor-intensive and paper-based annual audit and improving how the university calculates charges for tenants. The University of Oxford’s estate comprises of academic buildings, laboratories, student and staff accommodation, commercial buildings for investment and leasing purposes, farms, plus space embedded in a number of hospitals around Oxford.
The new indoor mapping system was created by migrating static CAD floorplans and associated building data into the online GIS software from Esri UK. Interactive maps now give an overview of the estate, showing buildings in context of their surroundings down to individual floors, rooms and spaces, while interactive dashboards show floorplans, usage and cost details.
According to Lomin Saayman, the Information Records Manager at the University of Oxford Estates Services, the challenge was to create an indoor mapping system which would provide 24-hour access to floorplan and budget information for academic departments and other tenants and keep pace with the dynamic nature of the estate, which sees several thousand changes every year — from repurposing an office into a laboratory to minor modifications such as moving internal walls.
Rob Nichols, Sales Lead at Esri UK, said that indoor mapping has made previously difficult to share static floorplan data rapidly accessible and easy to navigate by all stakeholders. He added that bringing CAD data into a GIS mapping environment had given the university complete situational awareness of its whole estate, allowing it to improve operational efficiency and make accurate decisions. While indoor mapping benefits universities with a lot of useful data, digitally mapping universities and colleges also allows students to easily locate rooms inside large campuses which eventually reduces the stress and makes navigation easy.
