Integrating Auckland's land development

Understanding the extent, location and capacity of existing Infrastructure and aligning to growth plans is critical when undertaking due diligence for development.

Capturing infrastructure assets in a ‘stacked’, vertically aligned Geographic Information System (GIS) model, helps HLC make informed decisions in infrastructure masterplanning and the development of urban communities.

HLC is paving the way in Auckland as the activator of residential land ready for the development of social and affordable housing at a time when housing supply is low and affordability is decreasing. Developing at scale and pace in a greyfields environment is their goal.

The aim is intensification – increasing urban density and optimising land use, while creating resilient and sustainable communities.

With any significant land and housing development comes the need for appropriate infrastructure – reticulated water, sewerage networks, stormwater, communications, power, roads and affordable and effective transport links as well as trusted community involvement and consultation.

The challenge begins in determining how best to manage infrastructure upgrades. What effects will these have on other assets? What interdependencies and overlaps are there between the assets, i.e. can they share the same utilities trench? How can upgrades be planned more efficiently and cost-effectively? How can new areas be activated by better location and capacity of infrastructure? How can this be used as an opportunity to address under-capacity infrastructure and optimise it where there is additional capacity?

Beca adopted a GIS modelling approach to visualise and define a multi-discipline model, which has been used as a basis for HLC’s decision-making. The complexity lay in finding a way to combine disparate data from each of the asset disciplines – each asset discipline used its data differently.

By using GIS, we were able to integrate the separate networks into a single, vertical view of all infrastructure assets across Auckland on a scale that has never been done before.

The outcome has provided HLC with a big picture view of all infrastructure assets, yet at a level of detail to help answer their questions and plan for the future.