Urbaclic (http://www.opendatalab.fr/urbaclic) is a solution that makes it easier for local authorities to get urban planning data. Its aims to provide local authorities with a tool that is easy to use (deployment on town's website within 2 hours) and useful for inhabitants.
Urbaclic agregates data from 4 national open databases and permits the reuse of these data by the local level. The databases used are about cadaster, addresses, maps and local urban planning schemes. These databases are owned by national ministries and are not easily exploitable by local autorithies.
With the script developped, local autorithies are able to re-appropriate these data about their territories.
Our solution is a javascript library based on the following opensource javascript components:
- Jquery https://jquery.com/,
- Leaflet http://leafletjs.com/,
- Handlebars http://handlebarsjs.com/
Our solution is a javascript that uses 4 API provided by the French government:
- API BAN for addresses
- API Carto for cadastre
- API IGN for basemaps
- API Urbanisme for town planning data
Our solution is open source : https://github.com/DepthFrance/UrbaClic
It has been designed to be easily integrated in our partners’ website and reused by web developers. It is therefore extendible to every local authority in France.
Our solution uses all the latest modern standards: OGC WMTS, GeoJson, REST. It uses the leaflet map library. UrbaClic is licensed under GPL (open source license).
The préfet of Occitanie (administrative chief of the French region of Occitanie) and Etalab (French Prime Minister’s task force for open data) are involved in the project governance. The préfet of Occitanie is the product owner of UrbaClic. The role of the préfet is to manage UrbaClic technical development, encourage Urbaclic reuse by local authorities, and help local authorities in opening the data they need to use UrbaClic. Etalab offers support in technical development and promotes UrbaClic to central government services that may use the tools developed by the prefecture.
Local authorities are responsible for delivering construction permits. Thus, UrbaClic allows citizens and authorities to access town planning easements for each plot of the Land Registry. Everyone will have immediate access to legal requirements attached to easements, as they will be available as soon as they are updated.
Our solution makes data more transparent. It makes information more accessible and reliable for all. Everyone has access to the same reference data. Also, our solution saves civil servants time and efforts.
The approximate budget is 30 000€.
The savings for local authorities are:
- for the moment they use specialised GIS companies to get these information (about 10 000€/year)
- the service to inhabitants is directly accessible by the website, so the officers are less congested about urban data requests
UrbaClic is not yet reused by other organisations, as this tool has been developed recently (version 0.9). But it addresses a specific need for local authorities. Indeed, as French local authorities are involved in land right and delivering construction permits, UrbaClic constitutes an effective solution to find relevant data. Every local authority can easily add an UrbaClic widget (Javascript code) on its website. This will guarantee a wide spread of the tool.
The development of UrbaClic has been funded by the French state through the Investments for the Futur Programme, as part of the Open Data Lab project. It is now financially sustained by the Occitanie region.
As UrbaClic adresses an issue every local authorities face in urban planning, the next step for this project is to provide data on all easements of public interest. Central government services will promote the tool and spread it in every French region that is providing data.
UrbaClic could be paired with a complementary project led by the Institut National Géographique (National Geographic Centre), called Géoportail de l’Urbanisme (collecting easements data in France). This way, Urbaclic could provide data on the whole country.