Government Agencies are to have access to a new world-first land-use tool from the Department of Planning and Environment (DPE) designed to speed up the planning system and save taxpayers money.
Deputy Secretary for Homes, Property and Development at DPE, Leon Walker said Land iQ would help Government Agencies make faster, smarter decisions about the use of land.
“It uses smart technology to speed up planning processes and will help us unlock more homes for people by addressing barriers and exploring opportunities to provide practical solutions across the State,” Mr Walker said.
“We’re already putting the platform to good use to support the expedited delivery of temporary housing in Northern NSW as part of our flood response,” he said.
“It’s a living platform designed to continue to evolve and adapt to the future needs of users, leveraging new digital resources as they become available.”
Mr Walker said that while the platform was only currently available to NSW Government Agencies, DPE planned to refine the tool and develop license options to make it available to other levels of government, Councils, Local Aboriginal Land Councils, researchers, and industry.
Welcoming the platform’s launch, Minister for Planning and Minister for Homes, Anthony Roberts said Land iQ brought more than 40 land use data types into a single platform, “making it easy to search more than eight million lots and properties and test different scenarios for land use”.
“Until now, Government Agencies have used various methods, tools and systems for land use analysis – it’s inconsistent, broadly manual and inflexible,” Mr Roberts said.
“Land iQ can help to change all that,” he said.
“The tool means Agencies can bring together more than 100 datasets from a range of sources to find sites that meet development requirements, then virtually test and learn how different planning scenarios perform in a specific place or region.”
Further information on DPE’s Land iQ can be accessed at this PS News link.
