Scania is a major supplier of trucks, buses, coaches and engines for industrial and marine applications. The company also provides a wide range of complementary and ancillary support services through over 90 service centres across the country. In 2011, Scania’s share of the UK heavy truck market was 14% and its combined bus and coach market share amounted to 8.1%.

Over recent years, Scania has been developing its use of business intelligence products with the aim of improving decision making right across the company. In the next stage of this initiative, it wanted to use geographic information systems (GIS) technology to develop a web-based solution to support its sales team and senior managers. It aimed to use GIS to display the locations of depots, dealer terrains, sales areas and key customers on interactive, digital maps and then give users the ability to drill down into these maps to view quotes, sales by area, revenues by customer and past and planned sales initiatives.

Scania had been using GIS for several years, but its existing GIS software did not have the capabilities necessary to meet the organisation’s objectives. The company therefore undertook a thorough evaluation of available GIS software and selected Esri’s ArcGIS system as its platform of choice. Many of the other software applications evaluated didn’t offer all of the functionality that the company required, such as the ability to measure and analyse drive times.

Employees within Scania’s market information team had the vision and technical skills to develop the new GIS-based business intelligence solution. However, they had no prior experience of using Esri solutions. Scania therefore decided to invest in training with Esri UK, to help its employees get up to speed as quickly as possible.

Initially, the market information team considered attending four or five of the standard training courses offered by Esri UK. All of these courses had some elements that were highly relevant to the team’s goals and training requirements, but other elements covered in the courses were less pertinent for the company at this point in time.

Scania therefore decided to take advantage of Esri UK’s bespoke, on-site training service. It worked with Esri UK to design a two-day course that would cover precisely those skills and techniques that the team would need in order to successfully develop its new GIS solution. The company also arranged for its own business data to be used in examples and exercises during the training course.

The qualified trainer from Esri UK arrived at Scania’s offices on the first day with absolutely everything necessary to deliver the course including laptops already loaded with GIS software and Scania’s company data. There were no connection or IT compatibility issues, so the course could start promptly and proceed smoothly. During the two days, the course attendees had the opportunity to complete a number of different exercises, which helped them to embed their newly-acquired ArcGIS skills.

Scania is confident that Esri UK’s on-site instruction delivered good value for money. The bespoke training for two employees was around £2,000 less than the cost of sending two people on five separate courses. What is more, because the course was being delivered in-house for a fixed fee, Scania was able to involve a third employee, at no additional cost. Scania also saved money by avoiding the travel and accommodation expenses that would otherwise have been incurred by sending employees on standard training courses.

The employees saved a considerable amount of time as they did not need to be away from their desks for more than two days. They did not fall behind on other activities, and the impact of their absence on the business was lessened.

Most importantly, Scania’s employees received highly relevant, tailored training in precisely the skills they needed to create the new business application. Because the course employed data that they were already familiar with, the course attendees were able to easily understand the new GIS concepts and capabilities that the trainer demonstrated and get to grips with new techniques more quickly.

Scania’s employees now have the skills they need across ArcGIS Desktop, product extensions and ArcGIS Server. They are therefore all set to develop a fully customised GIS web service that will help improve the effectiveness of the company’s sales team. The organisation anticipates that its new GIS solution will enable sales managers to interpret and analyse existing data within the business more effectively. They will then be able to align sales activities with current and potential customers, to drive greater sales success and business growth.

When earthquakes or floods occur, epidemics spread and conflicts erupt, humanitarian aid agencies have to be able to respond quickly. But before they can act, they need to know which roads are still passable, where vulnerable people are sheltering, what facilities are available nearby and much more besides.

MapAction is the only volunteer-driven charity of its kind that provides rapid, on-the-ground mapping and precise situational data to humanitarian aid agencies in response to a humanitarian disaster, or during a humanitarian crisis. This critical and timely insight enables international aid organisations to react promptly and operate more effectively to help save lives and minimise suffering.

Since its inception in 2002, MapAction has become an indispensable part of the global response to humanitarian crises. As soon as its volunteer teams, who are specially trained in disaster response, arrive in affected areas, their services are in high demand from multiple organisations. Consequently, on-the-ground teams face growing pressure to produce and distribute more maps, more quickly.

MapAction is also experiencing increased demand for customised maps. For example, search and rescue teams may need a specific map relating to a village that has been cut off by a landslide. MapAction volunteers try to respond to as many of these individual requests as they possibly can, but their time is stretched.

To address both these issues, MapAction wanted to find a way to share its maps and data in digital formats in the field, making it possible for aid agencies to obtain additional copies of maps more quickly and create customised mapping intelligence products for themselves. However, in areas of conflict and natural disaster there is often either no Internet access, or poor connectivity, and this inevitably presents a significant barrier to digital data sharing.

Esri UK has supported the work of MapAction for over twelve years, and ArcGIS, Esri’s geographic information system (GIS) platform, plays a pivotal role in the delivery of MapAction’s emergency mapping service. MapAction secured funding for a new ‘selfservice’ mapping facility, and sought out the expertise of Esri UK’s professional services team to help it design and deliver this inventive project using ArcGIS.

Named the MapAction Kiosk, the new GIS solution developed operates using the principles of web mapping and runs on a lightweight laptop connected to a powerful WiFi router. Aid workers in the vicinity of MapAction’s field base can connect to the Kiosk via WiFi and print additional copies of any maps produced by MapAction’s volunteer team. In addition, they can view interactive maps, zoom into specific regions and turn on required data layers to create any customised maps that they might need to inform aid missions. Finally, responders can use the Kiosk to download MapAction’s up-to-date spatial data and incorporate it into their own GIS systems.

“The challenge of developing a data sharing solution for use in the field, with no Internet, was at first quite daunting,” admits Matt Pennells, web mapping project manager and long-standing MapAction volunteer. “However, we achieved our goal using ArcGIS and, incredibly, can now deliver web mapping in areas where there is no web.”

MapAction will continue to produce the paper maps that aid organisations around the world have come to rely on. However, now, this unique charity will also be able to make its invaluable location-based intelligence accessible in digital formats to many more people, more quickly, to improve the effectiveness of life-saving humanitarian missions.

Notably, the MapAction Kiosk will help the charity to distribute its maps to aid workers who might otherwise not have had access to a paper copy. It will therefore make situational data accessible to a wider audience and facilitate greater collaboration between multiple aid agencies and local groups. Pennells says: “The Kiosk helps us to give a common operational picture to all responders and agencies working on-the- ground in a disaster situation. The sooner they have this shared knowledge, the closer they can work together to reach people at risk.”

In addition, the Kiosk gives aid workers the ability to create their own customised maps for the first time. They can gain instant access to the mapping intelligence they need – in the precise format they need it – to enable them to respond quickly to emerging new scenarios.

Use of the Kiosk will free up time for MapAction’s field teams, enabling them to develop additional specialised maps that can really make a difference to the success of aid missions. Indeed, Pennells estimates, “In a ten day deployment, the self-serve function of the Kiosk could save volunteers as much as half a day of printing and administration time.”

MapAction’s CEO Liz Hughes is convinced that the Kiosk will play a vital role in helping the charity to safeguard vulnerable communities. She says: “In most disasters there is a direct correlation between the speed of the response and the number of lives saved. The MapAction Kiosk enables us to provide maps and situational information to more people, very quickly, helping them to make better, faster decisions and alleviate human suffering.”

The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) was established in 2005 by Strathclyde Police to address high levels of violent crime. Now responsible for programmes across Scotland, the VRU works closely with other professionals, including social workers, health experts and academics.

In 2005, the World Health Organisation (WHO) revealed that Scotland had one of the highest rates of violent crime in Europe. “We had an unenviable murder rate – particularly in Glasgow – and murders with a knife were three times higher than in England and Wales”, recalls Will Linden, Analyst Coordinator at Strathclyde Police. “We also had a lot of alcohol-related violence.”

Strathclyde Police’s analysis confirmed the problem and also revealed that levels of violent crime were broadly static, but with increases in certain areas. “Clearly, traditional policing by itself was not enough”, says Linden.

The specialist Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) was set up to tackle violent crime, with two clear objectives: to reduce violent crime through strategic and focused use of resources, and to work with partners to initiate long-term change in attitudes to violent crime.

A Geographical Information Systems (GIS) was crucial. Strathclyde Police already used ArcGIS software and Linden recalls, “The thing that was absolutely key for us was the flexibility of ArcGIS. It allowed us to build the solutions that we wanted.”

The VRU started by developing a geodatabase of violent crime. Up to 70% of serious violence is not reported to police, and the VRU wanted a comprehensive and accurate picture, so data from hospitals, fire service, schools, social services and other partners was added. The team then integrated external factors that affect violent crime, such as poverty, housing, unemployment and environment. “GIS helped us to identify the scale of the problem, as well as start to develop a deeper understanding of it”, says Linden.

ArcGIS is used to identify patterns and advise local forces when and where to target resources. Strategically, it is used to examine practices abroad, identify commonalities and assess whether they might work in Scotland. “We don’t have exactly the same problems as in the USA, or the same scale of problems, but we do have many of the same underlying causes”, says Linden.

The VRU is building an international reputation for excellence and has received awards and plaudits, including the Centre for Social Justice’s ‘Public Sector Award 2009’, being highly praised by Channel 4’s ‘Truth about Weapons’ and is the only police member of the WHO’s Violence Prevention Alliance. Highlights include:

Understanding of gang-related violence
Glasgow’s East End has about 50 known gangs, each with tight territories that the VRU plotted on street maps. “This gave us a definitive geography of gangs”, explains Linden. “We could then map on incidents of violent crime and start to associate them with gangs and points of conflict between gangs. We overlaid network information on top of this to give us an understanding of how far and to where gangs travelled. The maps showed where gangs went, but also who they might interact with on the way.” This was shared with local police and community organisations to support initiatives for monitoring gang activities and reducing violence.

Reduced city centre violence
The VRU mapped and analysed knife crime and advised local police of the best locations and times for stop-and-search. The team also plotted ‘journeys to crime’ and combined these with transport and vandalism data from bus companies. Consequently, the police stopped some buses in the suburbs, which led to a fall in all crime – not just violent crime – in the centre of Glasgow.

Detailed intelligence for solving murders
Behavioural profiling and mapping of murderers and suspects can yield vital clues. “Everyone has lots of locations associated with their lives”, Linden explains. “GIS allows us to build up quite a complicated picture of behaviour.” GIS also improves accuracy, e.g. plotting the exact XY coordinates of where in a field a body was found. Linden notes, “GIS will always be a major component of policing work because it makes it so much easier to bring critical information together from different sources to make a clear picture of a crime.”

Clear communication with partners
The VRU has expanded: it initiates projects across Scotland and provides analysis for local police forces. As part of its remit to change attitudes, it works closely with various partners to tackle the causes of violent crime. Data is displayed clearly and meaningfully, whether by school areas, primary care trust regions or council wards. “By putting the issues onto a map that is relevant to partners, it makes it abundantly clear to them how violent crime affects them”, says Linden. “ArcGIS enables us to get a message out in a language that others understand.”

“Scotland’s figures for violent crime are coming down”, says Linden, but that is not enough, “We would like to see a lot fewer people being murdered and a lot fewer people being assaulted and injured.” The VRU expects to achieve this through continued use of ArcGIS.

Northern Gas Networks (NGN) distributes gas to 2.6m homes and businesses across the north of England. Its 37,000km network extends south from the Scottish border, covering a significant rural area as well as a number of large cities.

NGN has been consistently measured by Ofgem as the most cost-efficient of the eight gas distribution networks in the UK.

Good quality address data is vital for utility companies. Inaccuracies or duplication in address information can seriously impact all sorts of activities, from emergency response times to informing residents of planned works.

However, getting access to accurate data can be challenging. Because the typical utility firm has multiple address datasets across the business, there is a greater risk of duplicated entries. The lack of centralisation also makes finding address data time-consuming, hampering staff efficiency. And given the ever-changing nature of the data – as new roads are laid, buildings are constructed, and house numbers are changed to names – it’s easy for inaccuracies to creep in every day.

The need for a robust process for address management is something that NGN has understood for years. Its network covers not only two of the six largest conurbations in the UK – West Yorkshire and Tyneside – but also an area with the lowest population density outside of Scotland. This mix of dense urban areas and highly remote rural populations makes it vital for NGN to have accurate address data, to keep network maintenance and management as efficient and cost-effective as possible.

That’s why NGN relies on Esri UK’s LocatorHub platform.

LocatorHub is a powerful and flexible address management solution. It gives utilities centralised access to any and all datasets they want to use, from public data from providers such as Ordnance Survey, to their own sets of addresses, roads, network assets, points of interest and more. This creates a ‘single point of truth’ for all location information within the business.

Since 2003, LocatorHub has been the central, accurate repository for all address information across NGN. “Planning, emergency management, customer care, network maintenance, our technicians in the field – every department consults the same, accurate set of data to make decisions daily, which helps us to stay efficient,” explains Pete Crosier, GIS Data Integrity Assistant for NGN.

Importantly, the system gives every location a set of coordinates, to ensure pinpoint accuracy. It also constantly cleanses address data, correcting inaccuracies and removing any duplicates. And it can be embedded into other applications, making it a seamless part of a company’s business processes.

At NGN, LocatorHub is used to find the precise location of key business assets – from depots, to customers, to pipes. And it’s very easy to use; the vast majority of staff refer to the location information via a simple browser-based utility viewer, which lets them search for the information they want using coordinates, standard address formats such as postcode or via asset type or code.

Thanks to the accurate address data in LocatorHub, NGN is equipped to perform a whole range of tasks more efficiently across the business.

This includes managing planned works under the Iron Mains Replacement Programme. NGN needs to replace over 500km of pipe in its network every year, and informing residents of these street works is a regulatory requirement. Sending them to the wrong places or missing residences altogether, however, can result in hefty fines. “LocatorHub ensures we have accurate addresses for everyone, and helps us to plan the most fast and efficient drop route,” says Pete.

Accurate address data is also vital in the event of an emergency. Information that is duplicated or incorrect can seriously hamper response times, or at worst compromise the safety of residents. “If there’s a gas leak, we’ll typically need to turn off a whole estate. Using the data from LocatorHub, we rapidly locate the problem and have all the facts ready for any customers who may call in. We also know straight away if there’s a vulnerable person in the area who will need to be communicated with separately,” confirms Pete.

LocatorHub also helps field staff work more efficiently. “A member of staff might call up to locate something like a pipe or a manhole cover. They’ll typically be working on a restricted laptop, so they won’t be able to access this information themselves,” he explains. “All they need to do is provide a loose description of where it should be – perhaps ‘outside number seven Smith Street’. Through LocatorHub, our internal team can explain exactly what assets are in the area and how to reach them. This helps field staff get to work quickly.”

Importantly, LocatorHub gives NGN the reassurance that ever-changing address data will stay accurate long into the future. “Say we add a new-build connection, for example. It will start as a plot, will later be given a house number, and eventually it’ll have a postcode,” explains Pete. “Because LocatorHub continually cleanses the data, we never have to worry about any old references staying in the system and causing trouble down the line.”

Thanks to regular monthly support from Esri UK, NGN is always discovering new things that LocatorHub can be used for. Pete concludes: “When we first implemented LocatorHub, we didn’t know how powerful it was and how much we would use it. But it’s become absolutely central to everything we do.”

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) has a remit to ensure ‘Safer Lives, Safer Ships, Cleaner Seas’ on and around 10,500 miles of UK coastline. Headquartered in Southampton the geographically dispersed, 1170 strong staff of the MCA is responsible for implementing the Government’s maritime safety policy.

One of the key deliverables for the MCA is the provision of survey information to maintain nautical charts (marine maps for mariners) through the Civil Hydrography Programme (CHP). The aim of the CHP is to ensure that UK waters are adequately surveyed to ensure safe passage for shipping in and around the coastal waters of the UK.

The 2004 survey season saw the first use of multi-beam echo sounding technologies to gather bathymetric depth information for inclusion in nautical charts. Although this technology provides greater efficiencies, it has made it difficult for the MCA when responding to contractors tendering for work. With different models of multi-beam sensor, used on different ships, operating in different sea conditions quotes for work now vary dramatically from contractor to contractor.

The MCA needed a solution which would enable it to validate contractors’ bids in an informed, consistent and fair manner, to ensure that the £5 million survey budget is spent in the most efficient and effective way, as well as providing a method for agreeing payment for changes to the survey programme that occurred mid-contract.

The resulting survey costing tool, developed with Esri ArcGIS technology by Esri UK, allows a number of geospatial datasets and parameters to be analysed in order to generate an estimated cost of survey.

The ArcGIS spatial analysis utilises data including:

• The type of echo sounder proposed by the contractor. The survey tool can be configured to take into account proposals which use different survey tools in shallow and deep survey areas. The tool creates a grid of the survey area based on the swath width of the sensors.
• The user defined survey area polygon. This polygon is used to clip out the data required to perform the analysis. Clipping the data reduces the processing overheads. Data including a grid based on soundings is re-sampled to ensure that the pixel size matches that of the sensor swath width.
• Temporal information such as the maximum survey speed the ship may attain without degrading quality of survey data, downtime for crew rotation and ship turns.
• The maximum, mean and standard deviation of wave heights in the survey area. This information, provided by the Met Office, enables the calculation of the likely downtime a survey vessel may experience per calendar month.

All of the spatial grids are added up to allow a cost to be assigned to each pixel. This in turn allows the calculation of estimated survey cost. A map of the number of survey lines required to complete the survey along with statistics on how the estimate has been generated, is automatically populated within a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. This spreadsheet forms the basis for contract negotiations between the MCA and survey contractors.

The use of the survey costing tool has enabled the MCA to analyse the datasets required to create accurate estimates for the commissioning of hydrographic surveys. The costing tool allows the MCA to:

• Manage contract variations with a pre-agreed costing methodology preventing contractors over-quoting for variations.
• Determine the cost of proposed survey areas quickly in advance, ensuring that the “cost” in the cost-benefit equation is known precisely when choosing areas to survey.
• Providing quantifiable and repeatable results in much less time, rather than the old subjective, manual method of determining costs for surveys.
• Supporting business cases that the MCA puts forward for additional funding for hydrography.

The survey costing tool could be made available to sister organisations around the world. Due to the parameter driven nature of the application and its development in ArcObjects, the tool is easily customisable to allow for localised environmental factors. There are plans for the costing tool to be enhanced to be able to calculate risk to the mariner of not surveying a particular area. The tool could thus calculate risk and cost, and an algorithm could be written to determine where the MCA should survey in order to maximise the benefit from its budget.

The Meat Hygiene Service (MHS) is an executive agency of the Food Standards Agency (FSA) that is responsible for protecting public health and animal welfare. It has a statutory duty to provide veterinary and meat hygiene inspectors on demand, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, across England, Scotland and Wales; slaughterhouses can only operate in the presence of MHS veterinary and meat hygiene inspectors.

The MHS was committed to wide-ranging business transformation, led by senior executives with a clear vision of a more efficient organisation delivering a good and consistent service. Jenny Sergeant, IT Director, had a detailed knowledge of geographic information systems (GIS), but GIS was not used within MHS: “I wanted to try to raise an appetite for GIS with my colleagues, because I could see a thousand different ways that it could benefit the business, particularly during this period of transformation.” One day, she found some business users huddled around two large printed maps. “They were using pieces of coloured paper and sticky tape to mark out the proposed new areas that would be created from the business transformation. I just had to show them that there was a much better way.”

MHS implemented a single repository for spatial data, based on ArcGIS Server and linked to existing business systems, so that GIS applications always use current data. Next, MHS identified business critical applications that could quickly add value during the restructuring. In addition, a consultant worked on-site to share expertise and transfer skills. “The Esri UK consultant was exceptionally good and worked very well with the person designated to become our new in-house GIS expert”, says Sergeant.

Sergeant believes ArcGIS was crucial in re-structuring MHS. “It allowed us to make informed decisions about the future and the direction we want to take”, she says. Business manager Martin Evans explains: “We used ArcGIS to create 37 clusters of similar business value, taking into account the numbers of plants, the locations of staff, the geography of the area and the road infrastructure.” Changes to the plans were reflected in the GIS in a couple of hours, rather than up to six weeks with paper maps. Regional offices have gone and business managers and veterinary managers are homebased and grouped in clusters. MHS can clearly see which plants produce which meat products and allocate staff based on location and individual skills and qualifications. MHS monitors clusters, making adjustments where necessary. For example, flexibly allocating staff to where they are most needed, improving cost efficiency and service levels.

Human resources is benefitting too. Identifying mutually convenient locations for training is easy with GIS (but difficult from a spreadsheet). “It helps us to cut costs by reducing the need for long journeys and overnight stays”, says Sergeant. In addition, MHS uses maps to explore sickness patterns; managers can drill down to identify trends by region, plant and individual. “ArcGIS makes the business intelligence and knowledge that we have easier to understand. We can therefore use it to make better informed business decisions.” The service levels MHS provides are more consistent across regions. “Using a map, we can easily see the number of animals per employee in each plant… We can then make sure that we allocate similar numbers of staff to plants of similar sizes. This enables us to deliver a consistent approach to law enforcement across the country.”

Sharing spatial information is also easier, because DEFRA and the FSA already used Esri GIS. When there is an outbreak of animal disease, for example, MHS can load a DEFRA map of the affected zone. “Instead of having to hand-draw the protection and surveillance zones on a map, we can immediately see which plants are not operating and which employees can be reallocated to other plants”, says Sergeant. Similarly, as soon as MHS receives notification of a suspected case of disease, it can distribute accurate maps to veterinary experts, so they can be alert for nearby cases.

MHS plans a new IT infrastructure for its refurbished offices, including ArcGIS over its intranet, so that “it will be available as a means for everyone to access any information that they might need to support all aspects of their work, using ArcGIS as an everyday business tool” says Sergeant.

Natural England advises the government on the best ways to protect and improve England’s natural environment. It works with farmers, landowners, businesses and local groups to ensure the sustainable use of land and sea, and encourages people to enjoy their surroundings.

Natural England was founded in 2006 from the merger of the Countryside Agency, English Nature and the Rural Development Service. Each of these three organisations used different geospatial information system (GIS) solutions to support many programmes of work. Natural England inherited not only a mix of disparate GIS applications, but also distinct teams of employees with different skill sets.

This lack of uniformity led to a number of challenges for Natural England. In the IT department, significant amounts of time were consumed preparing spatial data in alternate formats for different systems, and maintenance of the disparate GIS systems was unnecessarily complex. In addition, new employees often had to be trained in multiple systems, while existing employees couldn’t easily transition into new roles.

To remedy the problem, Natural England made the strategic decision to consolidate all its spatial data and applications on a single GIS platform, Esri’s ArcGIS. “GIS is absolutely pivotal to the majority of our work,” explains Simon Coleman, GIS analyst at Natural England. “Our aim was to build a geographically literate organisation and bring everyone together under one GIS system.”

The first challenge was to up-skill 400 GIS users with different backgrounds to a common level of understanding. These users fulfilled a huge range of job roles from managing nature reserves to monitoring soil erosion and implementing EU-funded farming schemes. “Our employees’ skill sets were really varied,” says Coleman. “Different teams used different GIS packages in different ways to fulfil niche roles. As part of our migration to ArcGIS, we had to organise a comprehensive programme of training that would meet the needs of everyone.”

The second challenge was to arrange 39 courses across England, from Exeter and Kendal to Newcastle and Ashford.

Natural England commissioned Esri UK to design and deliver a bespoke, on-site training course for ArcGIS Desktop. The organisation wanted Esri UK to repeat the course on different dates and at different locations, so that its employees could choose to attend whenever and wherever it was most convenient. Consequently, the course had to be flexible enough to meet the needs of all employees, no matter what their experience or job role.

The Migrating to ArcGIS Desktop Foundation course designed by Esri UK covered a wide range of skills from querying, selecting and finding features to analysing habitat data. It was tailored to Natural England’s business and used the organisation’s own data as part of examples and exercises. In total, Esri UK trained 428 employees in 39 separate training sessions, over the course of eight months.

The success of Natural England’s single-platform GIS strategy hinged on the success of its training programme. Put simply, if employees couldn’t transition effectively to ArcGIS, all the benefits and cost-savings of consolidation would not be achieved. Fortunately, however, the training was highly effective, paving the way for the organisation to achieve its strategic goals.

Feedback from delegates was extremely positive, and GIS novices and experienced users alike reported that the course met their needs. In a survey completed following the conclusion of the training, 90% of employees stated that the course provided them with the necessary knowledge to use ArcGIS Desktop in their work.

Because the course was bespoke, Esri UK was able to incorporate training on how and where spatial data is held within Natural England. “Often employees aren’t aware of how much data we hold and how to access it,” Coleman says. “The training gave us a really good opportunity to improve employees’ knowledge of the range of resources available and how to use them effectively.”

The training provided was significantly less expensive than alternative options. If Natural England had sent its employees on standard, open courses instead, the cost per head would have been far greater, plus additional expenses for travel and accommodation may have been incurred. Equally, the organisation estimates that it would have had to have invested 60 days of staff time to develop course materials from scratch and deliver the course itself, in-house.

Now the training is complete, Natural England is all set to reap the benefits of consolidation. Employees can move easily between departments and roles, share data and work more collaboratively – without encountering skills barriers. Natural England will also no longer have to license and manage multiple systems which will deliver sustainable, long-term financial savings. It only has to maintain its numerous data sets in one format, which will save around 200 days of time. Furthermore, the organisation estimates that it could reduce software licensing and IT support costs by as much as a third.

Natural Resources Wales advises the Welsh Government about the environment in Wales, helping to ensure that all natural resources are maintained, enhanced and used in a sustainable way. The organisation consolidates activities previously carried out by the Countryside Council for Wales, Environment Agency Wales and Forestry Commission Wales.

Tucked away in a corner of South Wales is a saltwater estuary that is a Special Protection Area of European significance. Called the Burry Inlet, it comprises over 4,000 hectares of mudflats, sand dunes and salt marshes. The region is home to millions of cockles, and commercial cockle fishing has taken place in the area for over a hundred years. However, cockles also provide a critical source of food for up to 13,000 overwintering birds including Oystercatchers, Knots, Shovelers and Pintails.

Natural Resources Wales is charged with managing these precious cockle beds and regulating fishing, to ensure that sufficient stock remains to nourish the internationally important wildfowl population. Twice a year, it collects sample data from 400 survey points throughout the estuary, calculates the biomass of cockles and uses this information to set fishing quotas called the Total Allowable Catch (TAC).

For many years, the organisation had tabulated the results of the survey in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. Elsewhere in the organisation, however, geographic information system (GIS) technology was used with great success, and the fisheries management team recognised that it could use GIS to improve the calculation and presentation of its survey results. “GIS was undeniably the way forwards,” says Dave Tavner, technical officer for the fisheries management team at Natural Resources Wales. “We had used GIS previously, but we were a bit unsure about how to get started in using it for our cockle surveys.”

Natural Resources Wales approached Esri UK and arranged a one-day, tailored training course, to be delivered at the organisation’s own premises. The course was designed specifically to cater for the needs of the fisheries department and the trainer focused on showing the cockle fisheries team precisely those tools and techniques that would enable them to replace spreadsheets and transform their existing survey process.

Natural Resources Wales already had an Enterprise License Agreement with Esri UK for the use of Esri’s ArcGIS platform. The fisheries team therefore did not need to make any additional investment in software, in order to be able to develop its new GIS application.

Following the training course, Dave Tavner and his colleagues were able to use GIS to help them collate, analyse, calculate and present their survey results. The team took advantage of Esri’s Spatial Analyst extension, in particular, and employed tools such as ‘zonal statistics’ to accurately calculate the cockle biomass. In addition, the team used the GIS application to create visualisations of the estuary, including ‘hot spot maps’ showing those areas with the highest density of cockles.

The use of ArcGIS gives the cockle fisheries team greater accuracy and consistency in the reporting of its survey results. “The GIS method is less open to mistakes and gives us greater confidence in our calculations,” says Tavner. “Once the parameters are set correctly, the analysis is run with a few clicks of the mouse.”

What is more, ArcGIS enables the organisation to present its survey results in a far more visual and attractive format on digital maps, which are much easier for people to understand. “The hot spot maps that we can produce using ArcGIS are particularly effective,” Tavner says. “They help us to justify our decision to allow cockle fishing in a European marine conservation area.”

The onsite training delivered by Esri UK was of a very high quality and – being tailored to the organisation’s needs – gave the team precisely the skills they needed to use GIS in a new way. “Having training that was specific to our job was really helpful,” admits Tavner. “It showed us new techniques for achieving our goals.”

He adds: “Esri UK’s onsite training gave us the confidence to push ahead with a new approach to cockle management. GIS is now helping us to quantify the cockle population and take appropriate steps to meet the needs of fishermen and birds alike.”

Because the Esri UK trainer came to Natural Resources Wales’ own offices, Tavner was able to invite colleagues from the hydro-acoustic fisheries assessment department to participate too. The course was therefore highly cost effective and delivered benefits to a larger number of employees, some of whom may not otherwise have had the opportunity to access GIS training.

It is a shocking but little-known fact that more people die from the effects of air pollution than are killed in road accidents in Europe. Furthermore, the cost of providing healthcare to alleviate the suffering caused by air pollution in the European Union (EU) is estimated to be as high as €790 million. To protect their populations, many European countries and cities have introduced traffic regulations in urban areas. Yet, while these measures help to improve air quality and reduce congestion, they can be confusing for drivers.

Haulage companies and coach operators that need to plan deliveries or tours in multiple European cities find it hard to obtain information about the many different types of restrictions in specific locations. They don’t know exactly where road charging schemes are in force or how to obtain a permit; they don’t know where weight and height restrictions exist which might influence their choice of vehicle; and they don’t know the locations of low emission zones or how to check to see if their vehicles will comply. For private drivers and small businesses planning one-off trips to European cities, it can be even harder to obtain this information.

To address this challenge, the European Commission (the EU’s executive body) appointed the specialist air quality consultancy Sadler Consultants Limited to develop a multilingual public website to consolidate information about urban access regulation schemes in Europe. The first version of this online facility was extremely well received, but the EU wanted to broaden it to include data on all traffic restrictions. Sadler Consultants also wanted to upgrade the web site’s mapping, which did not perform well on mobile devices or allow users to zoom in and out easily.

When Sadler Consultants upgraded and re-launched the web site, it replaced the previous FLASH-based map with Esri’s ArcGIS Online, a web-based geographic information system (GIS) solution that adapts effortlessly to any device. Users can now view a map of the whole of Europe on the website, zoom in to a specific country, region, city or town and click on their areas of interest. They can elect to view all restrictions or just certain types of regulation by checking boxes in an adjacent legend. Pop-up boxes then appear with detailed maps of relevant restrictions in the highlighted urban areas, and users can click in these boxes for full details, in any of 26 languages, including minority and non-EU languages.

GIS experts from Esri UK advised Sadler Consultants on the deployment of ArcGIS Online and assisted in the redevelopment of the website. In addition, Esri UK’s Content Services team provided expert guidance on appropriate data sources and brokered a data licensing deal with sat nav data provider HERE (formerly NAVTEQ). The team took HERE data on traffic restrictions in European towns and cities and converted this road network data into polygons depicting whole zones where restrictions apply. The data was then used in a series of ArcGIS Online maps configured by the Content Services team for use in the project.

The incorporation of ArcGIS Online into www.urbanaccessregulations.eu has transformed the site, making it more intuitive to navigate and providing an exceptional user experience on mobiles and tablets. “ArcGIS Online gives us an interactive interface that people can use to easily plan their journeys,” says Lucy Sadler, director of Sadler Consultants. “The pop-ups give users summary information without having to leave the map. It works brilliantly!”

The information available on the website is also significantly more extensive than it was previously; thanks to the inclusion of HERE data, sourced and prepared by Esri UK, the site now offers – for the first time – details on the height, width, length and weight restrictions for all European towns and cities (over 8,000). “Haulage companies and tour operators have long been lobbying the EU for a service as comprehensive as this and now we can provide it for them,” Sadler says.

In liaising with HERE, Esri UK was able to secure a cost-effective data pricing model for the EU, and this led to a further improvement in the quality of the website, as Sadler explains. “Thanks to Esri UK’s negotiation and data preparation, we had more funds available to investigate the more complex traffic regulations, which need more details than those provided through the HERE data, so could produce a more comprehensive record of restrictions for the whole of the EU.”

Over time, commercial vehicle operators and private individuals will save time and money from use of the website. They won’t waste hours trying to obtain and understand information that only exists in foreign languages and will avoid accidental penalties from not knowing a scheme exists.

Ultimately, the main aim is that the website will have a profound health benefit for millions of Europeans. Mindful of the many EU directives on air quality and the environment, Sadler concludes, “It is my hope that the website will help support both towns and cities as well as vehicle operators, help to reduce pollution, noise and traffic in urban areas and improve lives across Europe.”

Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) is the Scottish Government’s advisor on all aspects of nature and landscape across Scotland. Its role is to help everyone understand, value and enjoy Scotland’s nature now and in the future. It does this by providing advice and information to support projects that benefit wildlife, habitats and landscapes, or that encourage more people to enjoy nature responsibly.

SNH is legally required to “actively disseminate” natural heritage information, but felt that answering inquiries as they arose by telephone, fax and post was not fully satisfying these obligations.

“We wanted to be able to provide a better service to the public, as well as save time and money”, Mark Robson, GIS Manager says. Consequently, SNH decided to develop an interactive mapping service to deliver information, whether about wildlife in the Cairngorms, facts about a Site of Special Scientific Interest or for planning a trip to a National Nature Reserve.

As a longstanding user of GIS, SNH needed a web-based solution that was compatible with their existing GIS architecture. “We wanted something that we could develop very rapidly, that would offer us ‘Web 2.0’ type capabilities and that could easily be integrated with the rest of the organisation’s website”, says Mark Robson, GIS Manager.

Esri UK’s Customer Care team worked closely with SNH’s GIS team to migrate from ArcIMS to the latest version of ArcGIS Server, which includes the Flex Application Programming Interface (API).

Flex made it easy to create web-based mapping applications with the desired look, feel and general style, and SNH was able to create a proof of concept application within a matter of hours. In development, SNH used ESRI’s hosted services, while still implementing ArcGIS Server. “When ArcGIS went live, it was very easy for me to switch from the hosted system to our own system,” says Richard Betts, Senior GIS Officer.

A key capability of Flex is its ability to integrate data and services from third parties. SNH created a mash-up, seamlessly importing species data from the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) into its own website. “Previously, we had provided a lot of information into the NBN, but we needed a way of making that information accessible to our own customers,” explains Richard Betts, Senior GIS Officer

SNH’s GIS team found the documentation on resources.esri.com well organised and well written. This helped them understand the capabilities of the ArcGIS Server and speeded up application development. “The whole application build took less than four months”, estimates Betts. “Considering how much new software was involved and the complexity of our environment, that was pretty quick.”

The site is helping achieve the goals of openness and value for money for the people of Scotland. SNH launched its interactive mapping in March 2009 and the site attracts an average of 3,000 visitors per month, with 20,000 individual page views per month. Most importantly, two thirds of users are return customers. “This demonstrates that users value the site and consider it worth visiting again,” says Betts. “We have been pleasantly surprised by the amount of unprompted positive feedback we have received from both users and partners,” says Robson.

Whereas it used to take over a day of an area officer’s time to answer a fairly standard query, now customers can easily find information for themselves. “GIS enables us to work more efficiently and frees up people’s time to focus on the quality aspects of information management”, observes Alan McKirdy, Head of Information Management.

New audiences now access SNH data. “ArcGIS Server allows us to deliver information in a far more accessible way and to a wider range of people, from planners and developers to school children”, explains Robson.

More content will be made available online. “Self service has proved to be better for our customers and a more efficient use of our time”, says Robson. “The next step is to take advantage of the simplicity of the ArcGIS Flex API to expand this service to cover all our data.”

Robson and Betts believe that the wider deployment of online interactive mapping will help to elevate SNH’s reputation. “It is now much easier for people to see what we do, what we stand for and why we are here”, concludes Robson. “Use of GIS on our website is helping to increase awareness of the value of what we deliver for the people of Scotland.