Salford council merges CCTV data with NLPG

Standardised data will enable the council to better target crime

Salford collaborating with NLPG for crime prevention

Salford City Council has collated information from all the CCTV cameras in Salford and merged it with the National Land and Property Gazetteer (NLPG) database in an attempt to tackle crime in the area.

The project was signed off last month and follows the launch of a council led CCTV rollout worth £1.8m in March.

The programme was coordinated by the Local Government Information House (LGIH), an organisation that focuses on geographical information-related projects. The body acted as an intermediary between the council and the NLPG to help them standardise key parts of their technical infrastructure to enable the merging of data.

The project saw the council collate information on CCTVs owned by private firms, individuals, nightclubs and hotels for example, via an online form requesting information. Data was only collected from owners of cameras holding recorded information for 72 hours or more. The aim was to tackle crime using recorded footage of incidents.

The scheme gave each camera a unique reference number and mapped it to the NLPG, a giant address database that stores information about all properties and land paths in the UK. Each reference number was linked to contact details of the CCTV owner.

Paul Coward, Corporate GIS Consultant at Salford City Council, said: “We needed a map-based solution with an incident pinpointing tool that enabled us to locate an incident quicky, as well as identify possible high quality CCTV coverage and the means to request coverage from any camera owner.”