A picture is worth a thousand words ...

... so is a map

A few years ago, it became clear that the primary and secondary schools in the City of Uppsala had excess capacity of around 1,000 places. The challenge was to see the big picture and assess need over time.

The solution was a digital tool with a geographical link in which complex table data could be visualised on maps and then compared. In this way, it was a relatively quick and simple procedure to gain an overview of the situation - both in the municipality as a whole, and in individual areas - and prepare a local plan which made it possible to eliminate many of the superfluous and costly primary and secondary school places.

The same opportunity to visualise geodata and trace patterns over time is extremely valuable in many other areas, such as research, crime fighting, opinion-building and environmental issues, to name but a few.