Case Study: Calderdale Council achieves safe, successful staging of the Tour de France and £128M regional benefit with Ordnance Survey mapping

Calderdale Council - Customer Case Study

Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council was charged with supporting Stage 2 of the 2014 Tour de France—a 36 km race through the borough with 200 professional cyclists, around 180,000 spectators and 400 support/promotional vehicles—creating complex needs for road closures, crowd control, steward placement and hazard identification. To meet these challenges the council used Ordnance Survey mapping data and products (including OS MasterMap Topography Layer, Code-Point, OS VectorMap and LLPG) to underpin early planning and risk assessment.

An Operational and Delivery Group put geographic information at the heart of planning: Ordnance Survey data enabled crowd modelling, pedestrian contraflow design, public-facing web maps for road closures and coordinated data-sharing between agencies. The result was a safely delivered, profitable event with effective resource allocation, estimated regional benefit of £128 million, an immediate boost in visitors on the day and a projected 30% rise in visitors post-event.

Calderdale Council

Robin Tuddenham

Director, Communities and Business Change