Xploria by illustreets

A sister company of illustreets, Xploria has been around since 2012. We specialise in spatial analysis, asset tracking, logistics analytics, and web-based location intelligence apps. Xploria follows a rigorous user-centric approach, so our products are not only functional (obviously!) but also very usable and even pretty.

We launched our first prototype, quite a while back, in a landscape where web based mapping apps with data layers had something of a GIS thing about them. Not that GIS is a bad thing, quite the contrary - it’s kind of like Google Earth, but better. But it is certainly not easy for users that are unfamiliar with such applications. The GIS learning path has, erm, a pretty high cumulative elevation gain.

Since then, the landscape has changed a lot, and so did we. Our prototype went on to become a separate company, and a full-blown cloud based geospatial platform. Its analyst-friendly features coupled with a versatile publishing system enable spatial products on several continents and multiple industries, from rural electrification and land development, to location intelligence and strategic business reporting.

While Xploria has continued its consulting work, we have been longing to breathe new life into one of our most loved projects. That is, our free, easy to use location research app , which allows users to have an in-depth look at any place across the country with just a map click.

…Only that this time it’s bigger and better. It covers the whole of UK, has data on demographics, crime, amenities, environment, broadband, and much, much more. It also has several handy features, like thematic filtering of areas, estimating public transport travel time, and finding amenities and schools within walking/driving time.

It is no coincidence that we have decided to create our open apps with a focus on the UK. Firstly, we are a British company. Secondly, from our experience, the UK open governmental data is one of the best in terms of breadth and completeness. Of course, a lot more can be done, but we have come a very long way since 2006, when The Guardian has started the “Free Our Data” campaign.

The only bit of complication is that, with the amount available, it would be difficult for users with limited time on their hands, or lacking the technical skills, to start exploring it. Even for the ones with both time, and skill, it still means plenty of work, and we’re not even getting to the publishing stuff, like building a web app, crafting the HTML, visualisations, authentication, and the rest. Data apps are hefty beasts.

So illustreets had to lend a hand. With its optimised rendering cluster, powerful SQL engine, and slick dashboard builder, it made easy work of 30+ million data points. That is roughly the volume of data which went into 'Know your place' . Exactly 0 bytes of all that data had to be processed locally.

And we are not stopping at this, but more on that later. Follow @XploriaUK or subscribe to our newsletter (see below) to be one of the first to find out when we update our free apps, or release new ones.

Last but not least, visit the Data sources section if you are curious about the data we’ve utilised.

Want to share your use case, or just to say hello? Contact us!