Ollie PotterMay 4, 2026

Ranking Data Center Sites with Geospatial Data 🗺️

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Ranking Data Center Sites with Geospatial Data 🗺️

Ollie Potter

See how we built a tool to rank land parcels for potential data center sites. This platform analyzes power capacity, fiber connectivity, buildability, and planning permissions to identify the most viable locations.

Ranking Data Center Sites with Geospatial Data 🗺️

Ollie Potter

See how we built a tool to rank land parcels for potential data center sites. This platform analyzes power capacity, fiber connectivity, buildability, and planning permissions to identify the most viable locations.

Chapters

00:00

Introduction

Overview of the parcel ranking tool for data center site selection.

00:11

Tool Features

00:49

Ranking Methodology

01:24

Site Analysis Demo

02:19

Top Site Example

03:06

Conclusion

Transcript

00:00

Hey guys, today I'm going to be talking through how we built a tool to rank 2000 parcels within Manchester based on their attractiveness to potentially become a D.C.

00:10

site.

00:11

So here's the tool here.

00:13

Let me zoom out quickly and you'll see there's loads of colored parcels, which is basically any parcel in the uk, over two acres in size.

00:26

So we've ingested everything there.

00:28

And then what we've done is we've overlaid data, on local substations, so what the connection queue is, how much capacity and headroom they currently have.

00:43

and you'll also see these blue lines which we've basically fiber scores.

00:49

So for each parcel then we've ranked based on a number of factors.

00:55

So we've looked at its power attractiveness, we've looked at its fiber attractiveness, we've looked at buildability scores.

01:02

So does it have the right slope?

01:05

is it in any flood risk areas?

01:07

And then we've also finally looked at.

01:11

Planning and permissioning dynamics.

01:13

So is it Brownfield, is it Greenfield?

01:15

and so let's take a dive in.

01:19

We're in centre Manchester now we can click on a site and we can also change by like the site type and the composite score.

01:27

But we'll click this site, Worsley Golf Course, this farmland site, which is scored quite low.

01:38

View details and you'll see kind of in the panel it scores how big the site is, whether, what its flood risk is and basically gives a really transparent view of all of those scores.

01:49

So complex permissioning because it's green Greenland, Greenfield, farmland, something about its grid access score.

01:59

So it's 6.7km from the nearest substation.

02:03

and then we've also given some kind of estimates as to, based on those scores and those distances from current fiber and power infrastructure, what may some of the estimated costs be?

02:15

So that's all great but let's actually look at one of the best scoring sites.

02:19

I'm going to zoom out, I'm going to search this area and the best site comes out is this northwest industrial site.

02:29

so let's view the details of that and you'll see it's popped in here.

02:37

So it's it's scored really well because it's adjacent to HV, but it's also brownfield, and 1km from the fiber backbone, really close to a substation.

02:49

So it's scored pretty highly.

02:51

we can then double click into that and there's also features to check out who the current landowners are.

02:58

But that's in the full version of the tool.

03:01

But anyway, that's a really quick run through.

03:04

I'll be publishing kind of an article explaining a bit more about the process, but, would be really keen to hear your thoughts on it.

03:11

And if there's anything that you want to see built in or improved, please just give us a shout out.

Ranking Data Center Sites with Geospatial Data 🗺️ — Tella