Blog 3: Celebrating London’s data story

The evolution of the Infrastructure Mapping Application (IMA) Toolbox and its role in the planning and delivery of infrastructure across London

London’s infrastructure landscape is as complex as the city itself. With nearly nine million residents spread across 33 boroughs, our capital relies on a highly complex network of over 40 public and private organisations planning and delivering vital infrastructure for our city, from water, gas, power and telecommunications companies to 33 highways authorities.

This is the context in which the Greater London Authority
developed the Infrastructure Mapping Application at the utilities’ request in
2015. Its main objective was to address the need to improve coordination around
infrastructure delivery in London. As Londoners, we know first-hand how
frustrating it is to have your bus re-routed due to roadworks and disrupted
access to our shopping centre due to closed streets. This disruption and streetworks-related
congestion cost the economy £100s of millions yearly. Four years later, with
industry support, the Mayor of London created the Infrastructure Coordination
Service (ICS).

A decade on, the ICS data and innovation team has expanded its expertise, offering bespoke GIS and project management support for complex digital tools. The IMA has evolved from a web-based platform, holding future investment and planning data, into the IMA Toolbox—a suite of digital tools integrating previously siloed public and private sector data. These tools provide invaluable insights into London’s infrastructure, helping plan for sustainable growth, minimise disruption, and support collaborative, cost-effective delivery across the capital.

Key lessons

At the ICS, we’ve learned a few key lessons through the evolution
of the IMA Toolbox from a single web platform to a modular data service:

• Importance of being a respected data partner – by establishing a legal framework and supporting processes:

The ICS has facilitated infrastructure data sharing in London since 2015. Firstly, through the IMA NDA. This NDA ensures that the right parties use the data correctly and builds trust in data providers that the data will be used responsibly once it is shared. The IMA NDA has over 50 signatories, including all London’s local authorities and main utilities.

The ICS has also developed more
bespoke data-sharing agreements and ways of working for specific use cases, such
as working with commercially sensitive data (telecommunications providers) and exploring
asset congestion data for future-proofing infrastructure delivery.

• Data-supported on the ground delivery is the most effective route to have a positive impact in our city:

Over the last nine years, the
use of infrastructure data shared by our partners has allowed the ICS to impact
our city and the lives of Londoners positively.

On one front, the Streets service has delivered over 30 collaborative schemes through the ‘dig once approach’, which uses data to identify overlaps in space and time between local authorities and utilities.

On the other hand, the
development service has made substantial progress in supporting developments in
areas of west London affected by electricity capacity constraints. This has
involved significant engagement with developers across the affected areas,
using data collection to map and monitor the situation and prioritise sites for
escalation and review. This approach to streamlining resolution has helped
unlock over 11,000+ permitted homes that would have otherwise stalled.

• Partnerships are the foundation of a successful data service:

Our partners and stakeholders are central to the IMA Toolbox’s success. With digitally innovative, data-driven partners, we’ve seen:

Our partners have also pushed us to innovate our data-sharing agreements and devise new working methods, such as introducing more sophisticated data sharing across our tools so that we can restrict data to a sub-group of NDA signatories. We’ve also embedded interoperability into the IMA Toolbox, allowing it to integrate energy, water, and infrastructure data from other platforms into a single interface. Crucially, this simplifies the process for data providers, who only need to submit their data once for multiple uses.

New use cases for IMA Toolbox and navigating complex data governance. 

The expansion of the IMA Toolbox to include more complex and
analytical tools meant that in early 2025, we reached a significant milestone with
the initial development of a water-focused tool and the launch of the Local
Area Energy Planning (LAEP) Datahub, an energy-focused tool.

Our vision extends beyond creating ‘another data tool’—we hope to
transform how London’s local authorities and stakeholders access and leverage
water and energy data to drive their Net Zero ambitions and plan for
sustainable growth. The LAEP DataHub and other digital tools in the IMA Toolbox
are powerful ways of equipping borough decision-makers with evidence-based
insights crucial for their climate action and local plans.  

Challenges

Launching new tools like the LAEP DataHub presented our team with some challenges:

• Establishment of data governance: The sensitive nature of certain datasets required careful consideration. We needed to develop a framework to manage restricted data effectively while maintaining security and not compromising accessibility. This led to cross-sector collaboration, bringing together GLA’s internal data teams, utilities, government bodies, and various stakeholders to establish a pragmatic data-sharing approach.  

• Engagement in data collection: The product owner’s direct involvement was critical to understand data sources’ nuances and generation processes. A hands-on approach can improve the ability to anticipate and address potential data governance issues before they become problems.

• Improvement in data quality: As the number of data partners and use cases for our different tools continues to grow, so does the range of data maturity within them. We continue supporting our partners in improving data quality through engagement, establishing minimum data standards, and technical documentation, like creating metadata guidelines for the LAEP Datahub.

As this article explains, maintaining a data platform for over 10 years and running a sustainable data service requires aligning many moving parts. The most significant part is the data shared by our partners, who share data voluntarily because of the good working relationships we’ve built with them by proving to be trusted data convenors and partners. Equally important is having a team of people behind the IMA Toolbox, which allows us to evolve our use cases depending on our users’ needs and provide continuous technical innovation to analyse data.

Future

Looking into the future, the ICS will continue to evolve the IMA Toolbox to respond to London’s infrastructure challenges. From supporting the Mayor of London’s pledge to become Net Zero by 2030 to readying the infrastructure to support the future demands of London with the development of cross-borough energy and water strategies, the IMA Toolbox will unlock innovation by making infrastructure datasets easier to find, use and share across the sector.