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The UK’s Geospatial Commission has launched a series of projects to explore key land use pressures, such as energy, housing and decarbonisation, and how innovative data analysis can support better decisions about land use change.
Through the National Land Data Programme, the Geospatial Commission is convening regional pilots, national roundtables and expert workshops to bring together stakeholders across local and national government, academia and industry.
It is estimated by the UK’s Climate Change Committee that 9% of UK agricultural land will need to be released for actions to reduce emissions and sequester carbon by 2035 — an area the size of Wales.
To ensure the UK can meet challenging net zero and biodiversity targets while also delivering infrastructure and economic growth, measures to manage tradeoffs and increase the sustainable productivity of land are required. Recognising this, the UK Government has announced that a land use framework for England will be published in 2023.
Recent advances in spatial data science and the availability of new forms of data offer huge potential to underpin spatially targeted land use strategies. By combining data about current land use and constraints with satellite observations and remote sensing technology, it is possible to identify multifunctional land management opportunities, or model the future impact of different land use choices.
The Geospatial Commission’s National Land Data Programme will demonstrate how spatial data can inform land use scenario planning. Through regional pilots and in dialogue with land use stakeholders, the programme will explore selected use cases and develop a blueprint of capability improvements to support land use decision making.
At a national level, Land Use Dialogues, a series of focused roundtables and technical workshops, will bring together land use decision makers with modelling practitioners from government, academia and industry around core policy challenges.
The events will aim to explore how better use of spatial data and modelling tools could support strategic, joined-up decisions about some of the UK’s most pressing land use challenges.
The policy priorities and issues surfaced at each roundtable will feed into a workshop involving experts from academia and industry, analysts and officials. This will focus on the data and modelling tools that could help support decisions on how best to balance the land required for the UK’s policy priorities.
The first roundtable, held on 1 November 2022, discussed options for the UK’s long term energy security. Subsequent roundtables will look at other issues such as housing, infrastructure and the environment.
The Commission is also working with regional partners to develop an understanding of how spatial data can inform local and regional land use strategy.
