Esri Ireland, the market leader in geographic information services, today announces that the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government is launching a new open data web service on its digital mapping platform.

The National Planning Application Database, which is accessible to members of the public, provides information on planning applications around Ireland. Currently, the database provides information on almost 300,000 planning applications around the country.

With the launch of this initiative, members of the public can now access and review information about planned developments in their local areas, going back to 2010. As planning information is presented in map form, it will also be easier than ever before for people to visualise where development is taking place.

The new database was designed and implemented using Esri’s ArcGIS, and is being made available for viewing and analysis via the ArcGIS Open Data platform, which is the world’s fastest growing Open Data platform. This new service is complemented by an accompanying web map viewer.

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In Ireland, 31 Local Authorities are responsible for the provision of a planning authority function. These authorities create and collect planning applications and assign coordinates to each application. However, prior to Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government’s implementation of the database there was no standard mechanism in place to manage the storage of planning application data.

Eamonn Doyle, CTO, Esri Ireland, said: “The launch of the National Planning Application Database signifies a key phase in the development of a national data infrastructure that will prove enormously beneficial to the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, An Bord Pleanála and members of the public. For the first time, stakeholders and other interested parties will have access to a visual representation of planned development throughout Ireland, enabling them to track development and contributing to more efficient national infrastructure planning in the future.”

Esri’s development of the National Planning Application Database is a further step towards the creation of a data infrastructure for geography and statistics that will ultimately facilitate evidence-based decision making across the public sector. The new web service can be accessed at http://data-housinggovie.opendata.arcgis.com/ while the map viewer is accessible at: https://housinggovie.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=9cf2a09799d74d8e9316a3d3a4d3a8de