A new community safety map for Milton Keynes, delivered by location intelligence specialists Zubed, is underpinned by a WMS (Web Mapping Service) feed of Ordnance Survey maps from Getmapping. The citizens of Milton Keynes can now get an accurate picture of crime and anti-social behaviour where they live, recently and over time. The SaferMK site can be viewed at: http://www.safermk.com/.

Safer Milton Keynes is a partnership formed between Milton Keynes Council, Thames Valley Police, Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service, Milton Keynes Primary Care Trust, Thames Valley Police Authority, Thames Valley Probation Service and other local community groups to make Milton Keynes a safer place to live. The ‘SaferMK’ Community Safety Mapping site developed by Zubed provides comprehensive crime and anti-social behaviour data for every estate, town or village in the Milton Keynes borough. Visitors to the site can look at overall crime or drill down into different crime types and then click on an area of the map to access further information, such as the number of incidents, trends over time and comparisons with other areas.

WMS is a standard protocol for streaming georeferenced map imagery over the Internet to web based applications, GIS and CAD software. WMS feeds only load imagery, in this case a map, that a user actually needs to see rather than a whole dataset, which often results in lengthy load times or delays when panning and zooming. Using a WMS feed means that there is no strain on a network especially when it is being accessed by many users at the same time. Having an external source available through WMS reduces network load and the costs associated with data storage and management.

“Since we host this web based application on behalf of Safer Milton Keynes it is simply a matter of taking a feed from Getmapping’s high performing servers. This is ideal and the pricing model acknowledges the fact that the Local Authority is licensed to use Ordnance Survey Mapping through the Mapping Service Agreement, making it very cost effective too,” said Steve Maynard, Product Director of Zubed. “This is the first of many similar sites that we have recently delivered using the Ordnance Survey WMS feed from Getmapping,” continued Maynard.