Notay joins Geospatial Commission

The UK’s Geospatial Commission has appointed Alexandra Notay, placemaking and investment director at PfP Capital, as an independent commissioner.

Replacing Dame Kate Barker, Notay joins the Commission a year after the organisation set out its vision for the UK to have a coherent national location data framework by 2025.

Alongside her role at the fund and asset management arm of Places for People, Notay is vice chair of the ULI UK Residential Council and chair of the British Property Federation working group on residential ESG.

She also serves on BPF’s Build to Rent Committee and AREF’s ESG/Impact Investing Committee and is a non-executive director at essensys.

Notay said: “I am delighted to join the Commission at such an important time. I am always keen to support the effective use and expansion of technology and innovation, both in policy-making and in business practice.

“I see the improved and more integrated use of location data as absolutely integral to the real estate investment, housing and planning sector’s contribution to our post-Covid recovery.”

Geospatial mission

Notay joins a year into the UK’s geospatial strategy, which outlined four key ‘missions’:

• Promoting and safeguarding the use of location data to provide an evidenced view of the market value of location data, set clear guidelines on data access, privacy, ethics and security, and promote better use of location data
• Improving access to better location data to streamline, test and scale the development of new and existing location data ensuring it is findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable and of high quality
• Enhancing skills, capabilities and awareness to develop more people with the right skills and tools to work with location data – across organisations and sectors – to meet the UK’s future needs and support global development
• Enabling innovation to maximise the commercial opportunities for innovation and promote market-wide adoption of high value emerging location technologies

The Commission released an update and annual plan in June, highlighting next steps in the strategy. These include:

• Publishing guidance on location data ethics by summer 2022
• Delivering land use pilots to improve the findability and accessibility of land use data by autumn 2022
• Launching the Space and Geospatial Services dynamic purchasing system to simply and enhance the mechanisms for public sector location data access by autumn 2021
• Publishing a report on the demand for geospatial skills in the UK by summer 2021; identifying further opportunities and approaches to diversify career entry points for geospatial skills by spring 2022
• Delivering phase two of the Transport Location Data Innovation competition, investing up to £4m to advance the best and most commercially viable pilot applications from the first phase to ‘near-market-ready’ products or services by spring 2022

Sir Bernard Silverman, chair of the Geospatial Commission, said: “I welcome the appointment of Alex Notay to the board of commissioners and look forward to working with her and the board in continuing to unlock the significant economic, social and environmental value derived from location data and ensuring that the UK is a world leader in this area.

“I would also like to convey my sincere thanks to Dame Kate Barker for her valuable contribution to the board, especially her expert advice on housing and land use policy.”