Within the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI), there is a group of highly skilled geographic information system (GIS) experts known as the Northern Ireland Mapping Agreement (NIMA) Support Team.  These specialists provide geospatial advice and services for a wide range of stakeholders in government departments and other public sector bodies.

Since its inception in 2009, the NIMA Support Team has used Esri’s ArcGIS suite of solutions to help customers and stakeholders find answers to complex questions on topics ranging from changes in the natural environment to public health concerns and the delivery of government services for citizens.  The data and mapping products generated by the team with ArcGIS are used to evidence, support and inform government policies, so it is imperative for the team to be able to optimise their use of the latest technologies and apply the most advanced geospatial techniques and analyses.

OSNI leverages a variety of ArcGIS training courses from Esri UK & Ireland annually.  New and existing members of the NIMA Support Team take part in at least three courses per year, which helps the organisation to ensure that everyone’s skills are at the same level.  Recent courses provided by Esri UK & Ireland for OSNI include ‘Getting started with Lidar’, ‘Creating and Editing Data with ArcGIS Pro,’ ‘Creating Web Applications using Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS’ and ‘Sharing GIS Content using ArcGIS.’

Previously, OSNI selected classroom-style courses that took place in Belfast, Aylesbury or Dublin or at its own premises.  However, to maintain its training programme during the COVID-19 pandemic, the organisation started to take advantage of Esri UK & Ireland’s virtual courses.  Its experience with this new training format was so positive that the organisation now consistently leverages Esri UK & Ireland’s catalogue of virtual courses.

Employees who are taking part in virtual ArcGIS training courses do not have to have ArcGIS software installed on their local devices, as all of the technology needed for the course is delivered via web-based applications.  The trainer can see everyone’s screens and intervene to provide one-on-one support to anyone who needs it during exercises.  “I like the technology that Esri UK & Ireland has employed for its virtual courses,” says Rico Santiago, Deputy Head of Business Development, Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.  “Esri UK and Ireland's virtual platform facilitates effective learning from the comfort of our own homes.”

The Learning Services group at Esri UK & Ireland offers a variety of one, two and three-day virtual courses, suitable for newcomers to GIS and experienced users.  As well as open courses, which can be attended by anyone, it can deliver dedicated courses, exclusively for employees from one company.  All virtual courses can accommodate up to twelve participants, and OSNI generally books dedicated courses, just for OSNI employees, to enable it to train large numbers of people at the same time and focus on OSNI-specific use cases throughout the course.

Convenient and cost-effective virtual training
OSNI has discovered that virtual training is significantly more convenient and cost-effective than traditional classroom style courses and just as effective.  “Esri UK & Ireland’s virtual courses provide the same high-quality learning, from certified trainers, without the expense of travel,” Santiago says.  “While I sometimes miss the face-to-face interaction of a traditional in-person course, the virtual platform is able to facilitate real-time feedback and engagement with classmates and trainers and does so while delivering value for money.  I feel the pros of remote training outweigh the cons.”

Training available to more employees
By booking dedicated virtual courses for up to twelve of its employees at a time, OSNI benefits from cost efficiencies and can make training available to more people, beyond the twenty-seven members of the NIMA Support Team.  In 2021, for example, the virtual training programme was extended to ten additional people from other OSNI teams, and thirty seven employees benefited from ArcGIS learning services in total.

Up-to-date skills for delivering specialist services
Providing regular training for members of the NIMA Support Team helps OSNI to uphold the reputation of this specialist group.  “Customers and stakeholders come to us for expert GIS services and support,” Santiago explains.  “Esri UK & Ireland’s learning services keep our ArcGIS skills up-to-date and enable us to continue to live up to and exceed our reputation as the geospatial and mapping specialists within the public sector in Northern Ireland.”

Confidence in work for government stakeholders
The regular ArcGIS training that OSNI employees receive enables them to support their government stakeholders with confidence.  In recent projects, expert GIS users have worked with the Department of Health and The Executive Office to support the COVID-19 response in Northern Ireland.  They have also supported a variety of schemes with the Department of Infrastructure, using the latest ArcGIS functionality to address complex issues like flood risk and management, and help deliver departmental objectives.  Santiago comments that “Regular training ensures we understand the technologies we are using and gives us added confidence in our work.”

Complex factors like extreme climatic change create new risks, in new locations, all the time.  The challenge for insurance companies is to thoroughly understand these risks and make well informed decisions about how best to manage exposure to current and emerging perils within a given geographic area.  When emergencies like floods, wildfires and explosions occur, insurers also need to be able to quickly ascertain which customers have been most affected, so that they can offer rapid support.

RSA was one of the first insurers to exploit the power of geographic information system (GIS) technology, using it initially to gain a more detailed understanding of flood risk.  Now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intact Financial Corporation, RSA has been extending and advancing its use of ArcGIS for more than 20 years.

At the heart of RSA’s business today is an enterprise GIS platform, built using Esri’s ArcGIS technology and maintained by Esri UK.  ArcGIS delivers instant access to the risk intelligence that RSA requires to understand which risks exist at a property and whether it has capacity to underwrite new business in this specific area.  “ArcGIS is right at the front end of what we do,” says Katie Ward, Head of GeoRisk at RSA.

The Esri GIS platform has been integrated with RSA’s core business systems for underwriting and pricing, so up to 2,000 employees in RSA’s underwriting and pricing teams regularly use GIS and mapping tools as a part of their daily jobs.  Considered to be a pivotal business tool, ArcGIS delivers geocoding and risk analysis services for everything from validating addresses to scoring perils and delivering customer quotes for new policies.

RSA also makes extensive use of ArcGIS Pro, through an Enterprise Licence Agreement with Esri UK.  The team of expert GIS users at RSA employs sophisticated spatial analysis techniques to create hazard models and reports that provide insights into new and changing risk profiles.  The use of GIS has replaced spreadsheets, enabling employees to examine trends and patterns visually.

Most recently, RSA has begun to make greater use of ArcGIS Online to create quick applications, on demand, that replace static maps and enable people to gain a deeper insight into a wide range of issues by interacting directly with the data.  For example, the GeoRisk team has created an ArcGIS app to show claims hot spots across the UK in relation to the locations of its loss adjusters.  Using this information, the business can make sure its loss adjusting staff are based in the right places to provide the best possible claims support for their customers.

Deeper understanding of risks
Through its use of ArcGIS, RSA has been able to take advantage of the growing availability of open data to derive a greater understanding of peril risk and thereby allow underwriters to make better business decisions.  Having a clear understanding of the business that is already covered allows underwriters to determine whether there is capacity to write more business, ensuring that RSA remains within its risk appetite.

Policies priced fairly based on actual risks
By using the platform, RSA can identify the exact property being insured, and the rate charged for a specific peril can more accurately reflect the risk that is being covered.  For instance, a person living on top of a hill would now pay a lower premium for flood cover than someone living closer to the river.  “Our use of ArcGIS and risk modelling helps us to understand peril more accurately, at specific locations, and then offer cover at a fair and competitive price,” Ward explains.

Fast, effective customer service
If a flood, wildfire or other unexpected incident occurs, RSA can use ArcGIS to immediately see which of its customers are affected.  “Following a recent explosion in Birmingham, we were able to quickly identify nearby customers and contact them to make sure they were alright,” Ward recalls.  “ArcGIS enables us to react quickly and proactively in emergency situations to help our customers, before they have even logged a claim.”

Well-informed business strategy
Following events such as a major flood, RSA’s GeoRisk team uses ArcGIS to prepare presentations for senior managers, analysing what occurred and the implications for the business.  These reports provide clarity in complex situations and are used to help inform changes in business strategy.  For instance, ArcGIS helps managers to understand if RSA is underwriting the right levels of risk in the right locations.

Efficient working across multiple countries
The recent migration to ArcGIS Pro, Esri’s latest desktop software, is saving time as the GIS team can now more easily automate processes, streamline data processing tasks and make them more repeatable.  In addition, the integration of ArcGIS with other systems saves time for RSA employees, as they no longer have to access risk maps separately, whether they are working in the UK, Ireland or Canada.  “ArcGIS is firmly embedded in everything we do,” Ward says.  “It enables us to work efficiently and gives everyone the same instant view of global risk, irrespective of where they are.”

Based in the north west of England, Ribble Rivers Trust aims to improve rivers across the Ribble River catchment area for both wildlife and people. It recognised the huge strain that physical inactivity places on the NHS and wanted to do more to encourage people to get involved in local environmental projects as a way to exercise, meet other people and alleviate conditions such as obesity and depression. However, the charity didn’t know which environmental improvement projects to focus on, in which locations, to have the greatest positive impact on the people who were most in need of help.

Initially, Ribble Rivers Trust used ArcGIS on the desktop to analyse open source public health and environment data for Lancashire. It identified key locations where people had health and wellbeing issues and where opportunities existed nearby to invest in environmental schemes that could positively impact these communities. “ArcGIS enables us to pull data and evidence together to target our efforts in those areas where they could provide the greatest benefits in a way that we just wouldn’t be able to do otherwise,” explains Ellie Brown, Strategic Evidence and GIS Manager at Ribble Rivers Trust.

When The Rivers Trust, the national umbrella organisation for river trusts in the UK, found out about the analysis work undertaken by Ribble Rivers Trust, it realised that the approach and resulting data could be useful beyond Lancashire. It therefore provided funding for Ribble Rivers Trust to extend its work to cover the whole of England. Ribble Rivers Trust published the results of this nationwide analysis on ArcGIS Online, creating a decision support tool in the form of an ArcGIS Story Map that is now freely available for anyone to use.

Since then, Ribble Rivers Trust has formed a partnership with nine other local organisations, including other environmental or public health organisations, local councils and landowners, and set up a project called Health and Environmental Action Lancashire (HEAL) to connect people with nature and improve the environment, specifically in areas where people have health disadvantages. “ArcGIS shows where local populations have real issues with health and wellbeing and inadequate access to green and blue spaces,” Brown says. “It has really added value to the HEAL Project, enabling us to prioritise and adapt our environmental projects to benefit both the environment and local people.”

Clear evidence to support funding applications
The ArcGIS decision support tool provides an indication of where health inequalities and environmental issues overlap, giving organisations the evidence they need to justify new projects. The tool was used in the HEAL Partnership’s successful bid for funding from the Green Recovery Challenge Fund, a government-led initiative that aims to support environmental renewal. This funding is now being used in multiple schemes, including a project at Pleck Meadows in Lancashire, where improvements to a wetlands environment are being implemented to simultaneously create habitats for wildlife, reduce flood risks and encourage local people to be more active outside.

Projects prioritised in areas of greatest need
Critically, the ArcGIS decision support tool enables organisations to use data to prioritise where projects are most needed and where they could have the biggest impact on communities with poor health. The tool has, for example, been used to pinpoint schools in urban areas with limited access to green and blue areas for recreation and high levels of childhood obesity. The HEAL Partnership is now running ‘Water and Wellness’ sessions at these schools and encouraging teachers to take pupils to local parks and rivers to learn. The pupils are gaining health benefits from being more active, while picking up litter on walks and planting trees to improve their local environment.

Effective collaboration with a wide range of partners
As the decision support tool is presented in an ArcGIS Story Map it is incredibly easy for people to explore the data, reveal patterns and find the evidence they need to inform their decisions. Organisations and community groups that do not use GIS can use the tool to view, understand and interrogate the same data as their partners. “Using an ArcGIS Online Story Map enables Ribble Rivers Trust to share data with partners who otherwise would have no way of accessing the data, and work collaboratively with a wide range of organisations,” Brown says. “Collectively we can achieve so much more than if we were working in isolation.”

Dual objectives achieved with each project
The ground-breaking thing about the ArcGIS decision support tool is how it is enabling Ribble Rivers Trust and its partners to achieve dual objectives with each project: improving the health and wellbeing of local people and regenerating the environment. For example, the HEAL Partnership has organised woodland walks, during which people not only exercise but also collect tree seeds which can be planted in tree nurseries. The ArcGIS decision support tool is used to find ancient woodland where seeds can be collected from trees with a local provenance, close to communities with poor health and wellbeing, with paths that are accessible to people with different levels of mobility.

Under the terms of the Fire and Rescue Services Act (2004), fire and rescue services throughout the UK must take reasonable measures to ensure that an adequate supply of water will be available for use in the event of fire. In practice, this means that fire and rescue services must routinely inspect fire hydrants to check that they are operating correctly and ensure that sufficient additional hydrants are installed where new properties are being developed.

This is an enormous logistical challenge.

In Norfolk alone there are over 23,000 fire hydrants, a figure that is increasing by up to 500 a year due to new housing developments. For many years, Norfolk Fire & Rescue Service managed its hydrant inspections and planning applications for new hydrants using a hybrid system, comprising a database and a front-end mapping interface, with the two parts maintained by separate organisations. The solution was, however, unstable and unreliable, leading to data inaccuracies and inefficient ways of working.

Norfolk Fire & Rescue service initially evaluated three off-the-shelf hydrant management systems, but none of them offered all the functionality that it needed. The organisation therefore approached Esri UK and asked the Professional Services team to work with it to create a comprehensive solution for inspecting existing hydrants, overseeing new schemes where additional hydrants need to be installed and managing the workload for mobile teams.

The resulting solution was configured quickly and collaboratively. “My experience of working with Esri UK was very good,” says Tim Allison, Water Resources and Planning Manager at Norfolk Fire & Rescue Service. “Once the project scope was agreed, the solution was delivered by Esri UK’s Professional Services team in just 14 weeks.”

Now, technicians on the road receive a map-based work schedule from ArcGIS Workforce and then go to ArcGIS Field Maps to enter data on the condition of each hydrant inspected. All the data collected in the field, and the progress of inspections, is immediately visible back in the office on ArcGIS Online, enabling the central team to monitor workloads and schedules.

The water resources team then uses ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro on desktops to add and remove hydrants, create hydrant schemes for new housing developments and send details of defective hydrants to the relevant water authority so that repairs can be initiated. ArcGIS Online provides a single conduit to all hydrant data, so up-to-date plans for new schemes and other documents can be accessed simply by clicking on the map.

Each night, up-to-date hydrant data is sent automatically from ArcGIS Online to the mobile data terminals (MDTs) in fire engines, enabling crews to see instantly which hydrants are available. On a weekly basis, data from ArcGIS Online is also fed directly into the Norfolk Mapping Browser, used by staff at Norfolk County Council.

25% - 50% reduction in administrative time
ArcGIS has led to significant time savings in the administration of hydrant inspections and hydrant planning in Norfolk. Tim Allison estimates that the water resources team spends 50% less time than before hunting for information, such as planning applications. He and his colleagues also spend as much as 25% less time allocating jobs to technicians and managing work schedules. “We are massively more efficient now,” he says. “ArcGIS is enabling us to manage a growing number of hydrants with the same number of people.”

Accurate data on hydrants available for firefighting
Norfolk Fire & Rescue Service is now confident in the accuracy of the hydrant information that is being sent to fire crews. In the future, it will be able to feed even more information from ArcGIS Online to fire appliances, when the MDT software has the capability to receive this enhanced information. “Fire crews on a shout can trust the information they see and quickly find the hydrants that are nearest and useable,” Tim Allison says. “This helps to save valuable minutes and better prepare fire crews to fight fires and save lives.”

Faster responses to hydrant issues
Using ArcGIS, Norfolk Fire & Rescue Service can now respond faster to issues reported by the public, such as leaks from hydrants. The water services team can simply look at ArcGIS Online to find the nearest technician and send an urgent job to him via ArcGIS Workforce, diverting him to this location. He can then upload photos and details of the damage, which can be forwarded to the water authority. “We can respond in a joined up way, send accurate information to the water authority and get back to the customer in a couple of hours,” Tim Allison says.

Clear visibility of management information
The water services team now has better oversight of the end-to-end process of creating, inspecting and maintaining hydrants in accordance with its statutory duties. It also has more information than ever before, as it can record information on additional water sources like lakes and hydrants on private land. ArcGIS Dashboards show precisely how many hydrants have been inspected, how many are awaiting repair and even how long each one takes to maintain, and all this management information is being used to continue to improve services for the future.

For more than 25 years, Wicklow County Council has used Esri’s ArcGIS geographic information system (GIS) solutions in areas ranging from local development planning to highways maintenance.  Throughout this time, it has continued to evolve its use of GIS and embrace new technologies to improve its delivery of public services.

When the council introduced ArcGIS field apps to capture data remotely, it began working with geospatial data in the cloud more extensively than before.  Soon, as much as 20% of the council’s GIS data was being stored in the cloud, in ArcGIS Online.  Paddy O’Flaherty, GIS Officer at Wicklow County Council, says, “We saw the benefits that we were getting from working in the cloud, and it made us think, why don’t we just move everything to the cloud?”

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Wicklow County Council made the decision to migrate the remaining 80% of its geospatial data and GIS services to ArcGIS Online, which is hosted and maintained by Esri Ireland.  Then, within weeks, COVID-19 emerged, and the unprecedented demands of this pandemic both endorsed the council’s new cloud strategy and accelerated the pace of the migration.  “When COVID happened, we learned, pretty quickly, that having essential data saved on ArcGIS Online, where it could be easily accessed, was a huge benefit,” O’Flaherty says.

Any data required to support the council’s critical response to the pandemic was migrated to ArcGIS Online first.  This included data about first responders and other organisations working to support people during lockdowns.  In the second phase, the council focused on data commonly accessed and interrogated by citizens, such as the County Development Plan, to improve the quality of its service to the public.  At this point in time, the council also shared additional data sets via its ArcGIS Online Open Data Portal.

The migration continued throughout the pandemic and, in the third phase, data and GIS services used by staff were moved to ArcGIS Online.  “Not only did we migrate data to ArcGIS Online; we also did a thorough data quality review, to make sure that the data we were sharing online was the primary and most accurate data set available,” O’Flaherty explains.

In the final phase, Wicklow County Council migrated ‘live’ data sets that are edited and updated daily by different departments, such as data on vacant development sites.  The whole migration was completed in around eighteen months and carried out gradually alongside other GIS projects, with no additional resources or budget, at a pace that didn’t overwhelm the GIS team.

A six-fold increase in performance

The migration to ArcGIS Online led to an immediate improvement in GIS performance for both council employees and members of the public who use the council’s web-based GIS apps.  “Users can select a thousand features, and ArcGIS Online will still return the results straight away,” O’Flaherty says.  “Planning queries load in five seconds now rather than thirty or more seconds previously.  ArcGIS Online is also very reliable and has no problems at all handling peaks in traffic.”

Easier management of 450 data sets

O’Flaherty and his colleagues are now saving a significant amount of time, as they don’t need to make software updates or upgrade servers with additional RAM.  ArcGIS Online also simplifies data management tasks, making it simpler for the council to keep its 450 data sets current.  “Managing data and maintaining our GIS platform is so much easier than before,” O’Flaherty discloses.  “Things that were a chore can now be done with the click of button.”

Time freed up to deliver new public services

Without the time-consuming burden of server management, the GIS team at Wicklow County Council has been able to create new web apps and GIS services in ArcGIS Online.  Furthermore, as all the data is available in one place, the team can create these apps much more quickly.  Offering an example, O’Flaherty says, “We built a new Residential Zoned Land Tax app in just half a day.  ArcGIS Online has freed up my time to develop more GIS services to improve our delivery of public services.”

Faster publication of up-to-date information

Wicklow County Council can now make up-to-date data available to the public much more quickly than before.  Planning applications data, for instance, is now updated daily as opposed to fortnightly and receives thousands of views per day.  In addition, Wicklow County Council can publish its County Development Plan immediately, as soon as it is formally adopted, as all the data is already online.  In the past, at least a month of post processing would have been needed before the plan could be published.

Business continuity during COVID-19 pandemic

Last, but certainly not least, O’Flaherty acknowledges the key role that the migration to ArcGIS Online played in ensuring business continuity for the council during the two year period of the pandemic when many staff worked from home.  “GIS was one of the IT services that was uninterrupted during COVID,” O’Flaherty reports.  “When colleagues needed information, we were able to make it available online straight away to help alleviate the challenges of the pandemic.”

Ringway is responsible for looking after over 50,000 kilometres of roads in the UK.  Working on behalf of local and strategic highway authorities, including National Highways and Transport for London, it undertakes a range of specialist highway maintenance services ranging from clearing gullies and filling potholes to managing vital highways infrastructure and assets.

The company wanted to improve the efficiency and sustainability of its services, by ensuring that routine maintenance tasks like gully clearance were carried out at the right frequency, in the right places.  However, the data that it was collecting wasn’t accurately geo-referenced, so it could not be easily analysed, nor used to inform a more intelligence-led approach to service planning.

Ringway used Esri’s ArcGIS suite of tools to build a series of apps, which were initially deployed in Hertfordshire and have since been rolled out to other parts of the country.  All the ArcGIS solutions were developed through a collaborative internal development process, involving GIS professionals from Ringway Hertfordshire, the Ringway ICT department, operational teams from other Ringway divisions and clients.

Field-based teams in nine Ringway divisions currently use ArcGIS Field Maps to collect data on their tablets about cyclical services such as gully clearance, grass cutting and bin emptying.  With just a few clicks, employees can enter data while doing their jobs, so no additional time or cost is associated with data collection.  In the case of gully clearance, crews record whether each gully is 25%, 50%, 75% or more full, and this information is visible instantly on a centralised dashboard, hosted on ArcGIS Enterprise.  Managers can then monitor the progress of gully clearance activities and ensure that client-specific key performance indicators (KPIs) are being met.

Using ArcGIS Pro, Ringway then analyses the geo-referenced data collected and other external data, to gain insight into where and when services are most needed.  Returning to the example of gully clearance, Ringway analyses gully data alongside data on flood zones and public reports of floods.  If a gully is typically full of silt and in a flood plain, it is moved to a six-month cleaning regime.  If it is historically always nearly empty and no issues have been reported, it is moved to a two-year cycle.  In this way, Ringway can ensure time and money isn’t wasted cleaning gullies at a frequency that is unwarranted, while providing regular cleaning for gullies that need it and building resilience into the asset management regime so that severe weather events and hotpots are proactively managed to benefit residents.

Ringway has also created a Virtual Operations Hub based on ArcGIS Online that brings data from multiple sources together in one place, in an easy-to-view format, for the first time.  Shared with clients, the fully interactive, map-based solution gives everyone the same accurate view of highways assets, planned and historic works and relevant external data.

£250,000 freed up for reinvestment
By conducting geospatial analysis with ArcGIS, Ringway has identified cost efficiencies of hundreds of thousands of pounds that its clients across the UK can gain by adopting a more intelligence-led approach to planning cyclical maintenance services.  In Hertfordshire, where Ringway cleans over 100,000 gullies a year, the team has been able to move 19,000 assets from an 18-month to a 24-month gully emptying cycle.  Combined with the operational efficiency highlighted below, this has allowed £250,000 of budget allocated to gully clearing to be released to fund other council priorities, in this county alone.

Improved operational efficiency in the field
As ArcGIS Field Maps is easier to use than Ringway’s previous mobile data capture solution, the time required to collect data in the field has halved.  Consequently, field-based teams can now complete more tasks in a working day.  Rob Payne, Service Development and Communications Manager for Ringway Hertfordshire, has observed that the six gully clearing crews working in Hertfordshire each clear two extra gullies per working day, as a result of using ArcGIS Field Maps.  “We can clear around 1,320 more gullies in Hertfordshire, each year, in the same time, with the same resources,” he estimates.

Informed, collaborative decision making
The development of the Virtual Operations Hub has enabled Ringway and its clients to collaborate more effectively and make more informed decisions.  With visibility of the same shared data, Ringway and council employees can see opportunities to coordinate activities and deliver programmes efficiently.  They can, for example, deliver new road works in tandem, which is more cost effective for the client and also more convenient for road users.  “ArcGIS Online gives us and our clients added intelligence so we can all plan our activities in a smarter, location-based way to keep the road network free of disruption,” Payne says.

Live information for intelligent asset management
Using ArcGIS Dashboards, managers at Ringway can see progress against targets, in real time, and move crews around to help achieve deadlines.  They can see how many potholes are awaiting filling and where road surfaces are degrading quickest and use this live information to make more intelligent decisions about how best to manage assets on behalf of clients.  “Our ArcGIS Dashboards give managers live information so they can keep a finger on the pulse of our services,” Payne explains.  “I can now answer people with clarity and surety.”

Oxfordshire County Council manages the delivery of services for vulnerable citizens across a semi-rural, semi-urban area of over 1,000 square miles.  Every year, it helps more than 6,200 people to live safely in their own homes, including those with physical and mental disabilities, elderly people who need long-term or end-of-life care and young adults with learning disabilities who want to live independently.

Oxfordshire County Council began using Esri’s ArcGIS suite in 2017 and now has over thirty web-based and mobile ArcGIS apps that are used across multiple departments.  In recent years, the council has focused in particular on using pre-configured app templates within ArcGIS Enterprise to create solutions for adult social care services.

One key solution is an app for adult care sourcing that enables the council’s Live and Age Well team to more easily see the location of someone who needs a new care package; find other people nearby who are already receiving care; and identify the care providers that are already operating in this area that might have capacity to take on a new client in the same locality.  The solution is highly secure and restricted to a small group of approved users to ensure compliance with General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

Another ArcGIS app helps the council to find accommodation for young adults with learning disabilities who want to live independently.  The council has 141 premises around the county specifically designated for people with learning disabilities, each with 1 to 5 rooms.  One version of the learning disability supported living app allows designated users to find a suitable property and access details about the applicable housing association, while a second version of the app is editable, allowing the commissioning team to show when rooms are available or taken.

Oxfordshire County Council has created a further ArcGIS app to help managers in the adult social worker team schedule repeat visits to clients within 12 months, in line with the council’s performance targets.  Each client is colour-coded on an ArcGIS map, depending on the revisit due date, so managers can easily see clusters of ‘red’ revisits that need to take place quickly and nearby ‘orange’ revisits, that are not urgent, but are becoming due.  Managers can then group together ‘red’ and ‘orange’ appointments in the same locality and schedule them for the same date to minimise travel time.

In another successful initiative, the council has used ArcGIS Survey123 to create a questionnaire used by council employees and fire service professionals to capture information from vulnerable people in up to 3,800 home visits per year.  The app prompts them to discuss smoking, alcohol consumption and issues like clutter in corridors, all of which can be fire risks, and make referrals if appropriate.  A second ArcGIS Survey123 form allows citizens to provide information on their gender and situation, anonymously, which the council can then use to evidence equality and diversity.

Faster provisioning of appropriate care
ArcGIS enables Oxfordshire County Council to quickly see which providers are nearest to a new client and able to deliver the right services as soon as possible at the best contractual terms for the council.  “There are over fifty care providers operating in the county,” explains Anne Kearsley, GIS Solutions Manager at Oxfordshire County Council.   “Council staff can now have more informed conversations with precisely those care providers that are operating in the right locations and that are best placed to quickly take on a new client in the same area.”

More efficient delivery of care in the community
By using ArcGIS to schedule repeat visits to clients’ homes by location, Oxfordshire County Council can ensure that its adult care social workers waste less time travelling around the county and instead spend more time with clients, in their homes.  Such has been the success of this particular app that the council is currently planning to build another similar one to show the locations where Ukrainian refugees are living and help it improve the efficiency of its visits to displaced families and their hosts.

Reduced costs and carbon footprint
As the council can now optimise social worker journeys and minimise travel time using ArcGIS, it has been able to reduce expenditure on fuel – a cost saving that is particularly important now, following significant increases in fuel costs.  By minimising mileage, the ArcGIS app also reduces the environmental impacts of delivering care in the community.  “Our ArcGIS app for scheduling social worker revisits recently received an internal Innovation Award for minimising the council’s carbon impact,” Kearsley says.

Safe, independent living at home
All of the apps created using out-of-the-box ArcGIS functionality are helping the council to support people in their own homes.  The living independently app, for example, makes it easier for the council to find appropriate accommodation for young adults with disabilities, while the Survey123 app helps to reduce fire risks in the homes of elderly people.  “Oxfordshire County Council aspires to enable people to live safely and independently in their own homes for as long as possible,” Kearsley says.  “ArcGIS helps us to do this.”

"We needed the right software to manage an increasingly complex and varied use of drones and meet the needs of multiple teams, from logistics to site managers to engineers," explained Dan Fawcett, Innovation Director at Balfour Beatty VINCI. "New digitised workflows are rapidly replacing traditional, physical working practices and introducing new levels of efficiency, accuracy and safety. On major projects such as HS2, the ROI achieved is significant."

Balfour Beatty VINCI has rolled out Esri’s Site Scan for ArcGIS drone flight management and image processing software, to support its drone deployment strategy.

The new cloud-based software is being used to carry out drone site surveys, manage aggregate stockpiles and monitor progress of construction. Various 2D and 3D outputs are being generated for sharing with multiple stakeholders, including high-definition imagery and 3D terrain models.

Site Scan for ArcGIS offers flight planning, hardware management, scalable image processing and unlimited data storage, plus seamless integration with BBV's Esri enterprise GIS system.

More efficient surveys
Faster and more efficient drone surveys are already saving around £20,000 a year on monthly construction progress surveys, on a single site, instead of using physical surveys and the subsequent updating of CAD models. BBV estimates this could save around £1.6m if the same workflow was applied across 80 sites in the first year.

Safer stockpile monitoring
Another benefit has been the removal of 800 'working at risk' days and a cost saving of £30,000 per year from monitoring aggregate stockpiles, using a single drone operator to carry out 3D volumetric measurements in 20 minutes. Previously, contractors would take a full day to physically measure stockpiles and calculate transport requirements, often working in steep and difficult environments.

Compliance management
Other applications of the new software include helping to show compliance with design tolerances in built structures against BIM and CAD models, speeding-up design cycles, particularly in earthworks and excavations design and monitoring the installation of utilities.

Like other water utilities in the UK, Ireland and around the globe, Northern Ireland Water has a responsibility to detect and repair any leaks in its pipes.  The organisation is responsible for maintaining a vast network of 27,000 km of water mains, a distance equivalent to a journey from Northern Ireland to Australia and back.  It has a dedicated water leakage detection team, but with so many kilometres of pipes to survey, across a vast and predominantly rural area, detecting water leaks is a considerable challenge.

Members of the public occasionally supported Northern Ireland Water by reporting leaks they saw, either by telephone or by email.  However, these reports generally included vague descriptions of where the leaks were and how much water was being released.  Consequently, it was difficult for Northern Ireland Water to assess the relative priority of different reports and then find the leaks on the ground.

Northern Ireland Water wanted to make it easier for members of the public to report potential leaks, as well as encourage more people to play an active role in water conservation.  A new business improvement initiative was launched, and employees from multiple teams came together to design and implement an app that would allow people to report leaks from their mobile devices for the first time.

The resulting solution, called Report-a-Leak, was developed in-house in just two months using ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Survey123 from Esri coupled with MS Power Automate.  As Northern Ireland Water had an existing ArcGIS licence, the app was developed at no additional cost to the business.  “The Esri suite of tools is so configurable that Northern Ireland Water can be self-sufficient and develop its own solutions in-house, as business needs arise,” says Sean O’Boyle, Asset Information Development Manager at Northern Ireland Water.

Members of the public can access the Report-a-Leak app via the Northern Ireland Water website.  Using their mobile phones, they can enter a description of the leak in an ArcGIS Survey123 form, along with an accurate location on a map and a geo-tagged picture of the problem. As soon as the customer presses the send button, the report is routed via ArcGIS Enterprise and MS Power Automate to the organisation's Customer Relations Centre. The team then logs the incident, creates a work order and sends it to the relevant team, all within a matter of hours. People who submit reports receive automated messages thanking them for their help and advising them that the issue will be investigated promptly.

350% increase in the reporting of incidents

The Report-a-Leak app has led to more than a threefold increase in the number of potential leaks reported by the general public.  Previously, around 480 incident reports were typically made by phone and email per year, whereas 1,700 reports were made via the new app alone in its first year.  While some reports generally turn out to be surface run-off and other issues unrelated to leaks, the increased number of reports contributes to larger numbers of leaks being fixed.

Faster action to fix leaks

When reports are made by the general public, works orders are now created and passed out to the correct team for investigation the very same day.  Moreover, the work orders now contain accurate map locations and images of the leaks, enabling teams in the field to find them easily.  “Every minute can really make a difference with a major burst,” explains O’Boyle.  “If we get more accurate location information from the public, more quickly, we can go to the right place straight away, fix the problem and potentially prevent the loss of large volumes of water.”

Greater engagement in water conservation

Northern Ireland Water considers the Report-a-Leak app to be an important tool for engaging with customers and encouraging them to support its water conservation efforts.  In the heatwave of July 2021, the organisation shared the app via social media, resulting in almost 200 reports from the general public that month, a 31% increase on the previous month.  “The Report-a-Leak app is a turning point for us,” says Mark Walsh, CRC Digital Team Manager, Northern Ireland Water.  “ArcGIS is helping us to work more collaboratively with our customers to preserve our water resources in Northern Ireland.”

Better customer experience

Using the Report-a-Leak app, members of the public can now report a leak in less than a minute.  They don’t need to wait to get through to a call centre or remember to write an email when they get home and then respond to follow-up enquiries from Northern Ireland Water asking for more detailed information.  “People understand the importance of conserving water and want to help,” Walsh says.  “The Report-a-Leak app makes it easy for them to do that.”

OS is responsible for surveying all 243,241 square kilometres of Great Britain on an ongoing basis making more than 20,000 edits to real world features within its datasets, every single day. This national geographic database is one of the largest structural databases in the world with records and details on more than 500 million objects, and a file size measuring over two petabytes.

Its maps and data are used to deliver critical public infrastructure services from emergency response, land-use planning and transportation to environmental protection. The private sector uses OS data to manage assets, maintain operations and deliver better customer service. And educators have access to a range of resources to help teach and meet the national geography curriculum.

To maintain data integrity and support the increasing and ever-changing demand for rich geospatial content OS needed a more efficient and effective geospatial platform to manage its core data capture and maintenance programmes. Quality control was vital. An adaptable, flexible and robust storage capability to house and maintain the extraordinary size of OS’s database was also a must-have. Ultimately, OS needed a solution that could be continually improved and developed, to meet the changing and evolving demands of its customers.

With Esri’s ArcGIS System and Professional services support, OS has been able to develop a new large-scale capture and maintenance platform: the Geo-Spatial Production Platform (GSPP). Using Esri UK’s web-based Sweet for ArcGIS, ArcGIS Enterprise and supporting tools including ArcGIS Workflow Manager the GSPP architecture supports optimised transformational business processes, a simplified data model and more efficient data capture methods.

Users operating from OS and supplier offices use online web apps to undertake job planning, data capture and quality control activities. Connected working removes redundant or disjointed data extracts, data transfers and dependency on rich clients.

Sweet for ArcGIS is the online editing client and the editing system has been configured to work with rich data themes, to validate the data models and ensure optimum quality. Notably, the validation of data is at the point of capture. Within seconds of a potential update, editors are informed of valid or invalid updates. This reduces validation at the end of a session, previously taking an extended amount of time and often rendering a whole edit session invalid if specific updates were against the defined rules governing data.

Simplified symbology and capture tools ensure that the configuration is focussed on specific needs of OS. The web-based nature of Sweet for ArcGIS means that version updates will be streamlined, while ensuring that new innovative capture tools are available to users without prolonged software update processes. Hosting in the cloud provides flexibility and scalability, and this modern, fully connected web-based editing environment is already driving measurable returns and benefits.

Cost & Resource Savings
The cost of data capture has reduced by 67%. To date, internal operating efficiencies of £1.5m per annum have been achieved with further savings anticipated. Edits in the data warehouse now take two to five days, compared to the previous 40 days. Staff are working more productively and can channel time savings into improving other products and datasets.

Data Integrity
The new data editing process is more reliable and consistent, enabling OS to expand data themes and improve the data on offer more quickly. The addition of new layers can be achieved with little down time to production and roll-out disruption is minimal thanks to the high level of automation.

Supply Chain Efficiencies
End-to-end supply chain costs, from capturing data to making it available to customers, have been reduced by 40%. The ease and speed of dataset delivery to customers helps OS provide even better customer service and enhance commercial relationships.

Supporting National Growth
OS data makes a vital contribution towards the UK’s growth, delivering to business and the public sector. The success of the GSPP is proving of great interest to other national mapping agencies and has the potential to help other countries better realise the economic value of their geospatial data.