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.

Around 97% of the UK’s wildflower meadows have been destroyed or damaged since the 1930s. This shocking loss of natural habitat has led to a substantial decline in almost all species of pollinators – from bees and hoverflies to butterflies and beetles. Consequently, there is now a significant risk that not all plants will be pollenated, reducing commercial crop yields and restricting the biodiversity of our countryside and gardens.

Recognising the need to urgently create new wildflower zones across Britain, Thanet District Council launched an initiative to proactively establish new wildflower meadows in underused areas of land throughout South East Kent. Led by the council’s Open Spaces Team, and supported by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, the scheme aimed to engage with schools and other local community groups to create dozens of new habitats where insects could thrive.

All that the Open Spaces Team wanted initially was a map, showing where the first of the new wildflower meadows were going to be established. It put in a request to the council’s IT team and was overwhelmed by the response.

Alan Bloor, a GIS developer at the council, realised that he could use the council’s existing Esri license to create an ArcGIS Hub for the project, with no additional software costs. This hub would not only show the locations of new wildflower zones on an interactive map, on a publicly-accessible website, but also support the council in engaging with local people and help it achieve many of the project’s wider goals.

Digital User Experience Manager, Jessica Seaward, recalls: “We suddenly saw there was a bigger opportunity to create a platform for engaging the general public and sharing information dynamically with local people about the wildflower meadow scheme, as it progressed.”

Thanet District Council first digitised information about the project that was in spreadsheets, using Esri’s desktop solution, ArcGIS Pro. Then it used ArcGIS Online to style the maps, before publishing them in ArcGIS Hub. Produced entirely in-house, the hub embeds questionnaire forms, created using Survey123 for ArcGIS, allowing people to use the hub to submit information directly to the project team.

One of these online forms allows members of the public to suggest locations for new wildflower meadows and put a ‘pin’ in the digital map to show a suitable park, verge, roundabout or other patch of council-owned land where a new meadow could be created. Another form allows community groups, schools and youth clubs to submit information about the wildflower meadows that they have created on their own sites, to help the council build up a more complete picture of all pollinator habitats across the region.

Strong community engagement in action to support pollinators
The use of ArcGIS Hub has enabled Thanet District Council to directly involve the general public in the conversation about pollination and allow people to suggest locations for new wildflower meadows. ArcGIS Hub has also made it possible for community groups and schools to register their own wildflower meadows and work in tandem with the council to help improve biodiversity. “What started with a few wildflower seeds has grown into an ambitious, community-engaged initiative,” Seaward says. “ArcGIS Hub is helping us to engage the public’s support and transform underused patches of ground around the region into an expanding network of wildflower habitats.”

Transparent information about pollinator zones, accessible to everyone
All the wildflower meadows created by the council, schools, groups and individuals are now displayed on a single, interactive map on ArcGIS Hub, accessible to everyone. Citizens therefore have a transparent view of pollinator zones across the district and can easily monitor how this council-led scheme is progressing over time. “The use of ArcGIS Hub has undoubtedly helped to build awareness of the scheme,” Bloor says. “It shows the positive action Thanet District Council is taking, right now, to support pollinators and improve biodiversity.”

Effective strategies to improve pollination across entire district
Thanet District Council plans to use the ArcGIS Hub to measure the distance between meadows and prioritise the creation of new habitats in areas where there are none. Ecologists will, for example, be able us use the interactive maps to easily see where there are clusters of meadows and where there are gaps. This information will help to open up conversations with other landowners and farmers to see what they can do to help the council close the gaps and improve pollination across the entire district.

A platform for other future environmental schemes
Named the ‘Biodiversity and Green Initiatives Hub’, Thanet District Council’s ArcGIS Hub currently just focuses on the pollinator project. However, the council plans to expand the platform in the future to share information about other similar environmental schemes. “We are facing a very real climate emergency, and local authorities have to do what they can to protect and increase biodiversity,” Seaward says. “ArcGIS Hub is a tool that we will be able to use to engage with the public in many future environmental schemes.”

In 2021, thousands of people from all over the globe converged on Glasgow for the COP26 Climate Change Conference, including 104 Heads of State, members of the British Royal Family and world-renowned environment and climate experts.  Before and during this high-profiled event, Police Scotland needed to search and seal around 7,000 drains, vents, lamp posts, utility cabinets and similar assets with small openings where improvised explosive devices, firearms and other items for disrupting the event could be concealed.  The organisation knew that an operation on this massive scale was going to be almost impossible with the resources available, if it used the standard paper-based search and seal process.

Police Scotland addressed this pressing challenge by developing a digital, mobile workflow for search and seal operations using the combination of ArcGIS Field Maps and ArcGIS Dashboards.  The bespoke solution was created quickly and cost-effectively by the force’s in-house GIS team, using out-of-the-box functionality, to operate on police officers’ existing devices. 

Using the new workflow, specialist police officers were tasked to search and seal specific clusters of assets, all of which were uniquely numbered.  They could see pictures and maps of the assets on their mobile devices helping them to find and correctly identify them in the field, and ensure none were missed.  Next the solution was used to carry out inspections to identify any damaged seals.  When potential issues were identified, field staff used online forms within the solution to flag assets that needed to be searched and sealed again and raise any concerns.   

An ArcGIS Dashboard in ArcGIS Online provided senior officers with a complete, real-time view of the entire operation, enabling them to better manage the allocation of tasks to field teams.  Broken seals or issues recorded in the field were instantly visible, enabling specialist teams to take action quickly.  Furthermore, when coastguard personnel were brought in to help the police inspect seals during the event, Police Scotland could use ArcGIS Online to give them limited, secure access to the data they needed, on their own devices, while still complying with the strict security controls governing the event.   

Up to 75% faster search and seal operations
Using ArcGIS, Police Scotland could search and seal drains and other assets 50% to 75% faster than before. Consequently, the force could cover a large area of Glasgow and carry out an effective search and seal process on the enormous scale needed for COP26, with a relatively small team. The previous paper-based approach would not have been able to scale up adequately with the resources available.

A more rapid response to potential security issues
Critically, the ArcGIS solution enabled Police Scotland to respond more quickly to potential security issues during the event. For example, whenever an inspection team reported a broken seal, the fault was instantly flagged on the ArcGIS Dashboard, so the reseal team could go immediately to this location to secure it again. With the previous paper-based system, it could have been the next day before information from the field was received in the office and passed back out again to another team.

Improved management of a vital security operation
ArcGIS provided a single operating picture and live updates of what was happening in the field, on any device. As a result, senior officers could monitor the progress of search and seal operations in real-time, on their mobile devices, see where seal damage was occurring most frequently and then allocate teams to the areas of greatest risk. They could also be a lot more mobile and make decisions about search and seal on the fly, while doing other important policing tasks to ensure the safety of people throughout the city.

Efficient collaboration with partners
During COP26, the team of 20 specialist search and seal officers from Police Scotland was able to work efficiently with 20 coastguard personnel and around 80 additional police resources from English forces, using the same ArcGIS workflow. Without this ArcGIS-based approach, Police Scotland estimates that it would have needed three times as many police and partner resources to manage the search and seal process throughout the event.

A lower carbon impact
In keeping with the aims of COP26, the new ArcGIS workflow enabled Police Scotland to reduce the unnecessary use of paper. The force estimates that its previous approach would have generated around five file boxes of paper, but in the entire search and seal process for the event, just four sheets of paper were printed. Police Scotland is now building on its experience with the search and seal solution and plans to develop new digital workflows with ArcGIS, to continue the legacy of COP26.

A vast amount of water can be required to put out major fires.  Indeed, a blaze at a multi-story residence, school or commercial premises can require 35 to 75 litres of water per second to bring it under control.  Water utilities are, however, often not aware if there is sufficient water capacity and pressure for firefighting at every property in their region.  Equally, when fire crews are called out to emergencies, they generally don’t know in advance what water pressure to expect at the nearest hydrants or whether there will be sufficient water capacity to enable them to implement their preferred firefighting strategy.

Recognising these challenges, Stantec set out to develop a solution that would calculate the water capacity and pressure at each hydrant across a water supply network and also assess whether there was sufficient fire flow available to tackle fires at individual buildings.  Its prototype application, called the Fire Flow System, attracted the interest of Thames Water and led to the delivery of a fully operational solution covering all of Greater London.

Built using ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Experience Builder, the Fire Flow System for Thames Water:

• Estimates how much water would be required to fight a fire at 1.7 million individual properties in Greater London, based on the types of buildings, number of floors and whether they are residential
• Calculates whether sufficient water flow is available in the water supply network to fight fires, at each individual property
• Displays which hydrants are available and most suitable to use for firefighting at each building
• Presents a 3D digital twin of all buildings in the capital, on ArcGIS Online, categorised and colour-coded by the ability to meet firefighting requirements
• Highlights in red all buildings where there is insufficient water supply to extinguish a serious fire, should one occur at this location.

The solution for Thames Water was developed in collaboration with the London Fire Brigade and takes into account standard procedures for how fire crews fight fires.  For instance, the system knows the typical length of hoses used by the London Fire Brigade and rules about how and where hoses can be laid near waterways, roads and rail infrastructure.  Now both organisations use the Fire Flow System daily, in offices and in the field.  “The ArcGIS Online environment is key to collaboration,” says Sunil Terkar, Principal GIS Technician.   “Thames Water can update the Fire Flow System and share new information instantly with the London Fire Brigade.”

Effective responses to fires in London

When 999 calls are received by the London Fire Brigade, staff at dispatch centres and firefighters travelling in fire engines can view the Fire Flow System online to see exactly which hydrants are closest to the fire, within reach of hoses and able to deliver the required water pressure and water volume.  If firefighters know there is a potential problem with water flow in advance, they can order tankers to site earlier and plan different attack methods.  “Our innovative use of ArcGIS gives firefighters immediate access to up-to-date information about water flows and hydrants, enabling them to make the right decisions and implement the most effective strategies to put out fires quickly,” says Michael Morrisroe, Technical Director at Stantec.

Focused measures to create a safer city

For the first time, Thames Water and the London Fire Brigade now have accurate, shared, up-to-date information about water flow in Greater London.  ArcGIS clearly identifies, on 2D and 3D maps, specific buildings that would be hard to reach with the required water flow in the event of a fire.  Consequently, Thames Water and the London Fire Brigade can now plan ahead and put focused measures in place to mitigate the risk of inadequate water flow, to help make London a safer place to live and work.

Informed decision making in planning process

The clarity of the information displayed via ArcGIS Online enables the London Fire Brigade to take water flow into account, for the first time, when approving or rejecting planning permissions.  It is easy for personnel to use the interactive mapping interface to zoom into a specific building and see if it has sufficient water flow to permit a change of use or new development.  “The solution was recently consulted when the Excel Centre was transformed into a Nightingale Hospital,” Morrisroe explains.

Less water wastage during hydrant testing

Through this innovative use of ArcGIS, Stantec has delivered a solution that enables Thames Water to quantify likely fire flows for the first time and therefore better understand hydrant performance across the city.  As ArcGIS highlights clearly which hydrants have the required pressure and capacity and which do not, Thames Water can better plan its routine testing of fire hydrants and only carry out full flow tests where absolutely necessary.  This not only saves time for Thames Water, but could also potentially save millions of litres of water a year, while maintaining the operational readiness of the hydrant network.

Already Britain’s biggest generator of zero carbon electricity, EDF is driving the development of new nuclear energy sites that will increase the availability of sustainable energy in the UK. At Hinkley Point C in Somerset, it is building two new nuclear reactors to generate zero carbon electricity for around six million homes. This enormous and highly complex construction project involves more than 6,500 people on site, thousands of people off site and a supply chain of partners extending all around the world. EDF needed an effective way to share project and site information with these employees, contractors and partners in order to inform decision making, ensure site safety, support collaboration and improve efficiency.

After creating an initial proof of concept using Esri’s ArcGIS Online solution, EDF adopted Esri’s ArcGIS Enterprise to support the Hinkley Point C project.  Hosted in EDF’s Azure cloud environment, this core system provides a portal to the project’s spatial data and is currently used by over 750 employees and third-party contractors.  Jon Dolphin, Geographic Information System (GIS) Lead (Nuclear New Build) at EDF says, “The ArcGIS Online proof of concept rapidly captured imaginations of what was possible using GIS in a megaproject.  Now, the number of people using ArcGIS is growing every day, as more and more people become aware of what ArcGIS has to offer.”

Using ArcGIS Enterprise, EDF has created suites of maps, web apps, mobile solutions and dashboards for specific teams or groups of users, including the emergency team, environmental team, temporary works team, electrical team and radiological safety team.  Forming integrated, ArcGIS-driven workflows, these solutions allow employees and contractors to access data on demand and perform their jobs as efficiently as possible.  Many of the solutions have been built using ArcGIS Field Maps, Survey123 for ArcGIS and ArcGIS Dashboards, replacing complex data collection methods, excel spreadsheets and manually-generated reports.

Assurance of safety measures
A suite of ArcGIS solutions developed for EDF’s emergency team at Hinkley Point C is helping to ensure the safety of the thousands of employees and contractors who may be working across the 174 hectare site at any one time.  Inspectors use ArcGIS field apps to check that rendezvous points are accessible and in good condition, so that medical aid and assistance can be delivered promptly in an emergency.  If any obstructions or other issues are identified, details can be collected immediately in the field and routed to the people who need to take action, enabling the assurance of safety measures far more quickly.

Improved cost efficiency and compliance
Across many aspects of the construction project, ArcGIS is helping EDF to operate cost efficiently and comply with applicable legislation.  For example, EDF has created an ArcGIS workflow for awarding and managing permits for the use of temporary power generators.  Replacing a spreadsheet-based process, the ArcGIS solution uses apps, maps and dashboards to enable managers to understand precisely where generators are needed and for how long.  With this improved oversight, they can ensure generators are only used when absolutely necessary, reducing costs, lowering emissions and ensuring compliance with emissions legislation.

Effective coordination of simultaneous works
ArcGIS Enterprise is becoming a core business system, helping EDF to coordinate hundreds of simultaneous programmes of work and keep this mega-project on schedule.  One key ArcGIS solution enables EDF to manage temporary works, such as scaffolding, excavations or earth works, ensuring that the activities of one contractor do not impede the activities of another working in close proximity on a different aspect of the build.  Managers use a suite of integrated ArcGIS maps, dashboards and field apps to plan the temporary works and then inspect them to ensure they are proceeding in the agreed way, in the right place.

Clear visibility of the bigger picture
With so many different teams and contractors all working together to deliver the new nuclear reactors, ArcGIS Enterprise plays a critical role in ensuring that everyone has access to the same single source of accurate information and can collaborate effectively.  Any approved user can access ArcGIS Enterprise to see the latest as-built site drawings and plan their jobs safely with an accurate knowledge of the wider construction project.  “ArcGIS helps different people, teams and contractors to understand the big picture and how they fit into it,” Dolphin says.  “If a picture paints a thousand words, a map paints a thousand pictures.”

Shared understanding of environmental constraints
EDF is increasingly using ArcGIS Enterprise to help it manage environmental aspects of the construction project and plans to incorporate more environmental monitoring data in the near future.  It also intends to make greater use of ArcGIS to visualise complex environmental implications such as light pollution and the continued implementation of associated planning conditions.  Already, the organisation uses ArcGIS Enterprise to make all employees and contractors aware of environmental constraints, such as bat corridors, to help everyone work together to safeguard the area’s wildlife.

Balfour Beatty VINCI (BBV) is responsible for delivering the longest section in the first phase of HS2, the UK’s new high speed rail link to the north of England and one of the most challenging railway projects currently underway in Europe.  The organisation needs to design and build 80 km of state-of-the-art rail infrastructure, comprising 66 overbridges, 42 viaducts, 35 cuttings, 33 km of embankments and four motorway crossings.    

To help it coordinate and deliver this huge feat of engineering, BBV wanted to be able to store all of the geospatial data relating to all aspects of the project in one place, and create tailored apps and dashboards to make it available to everyone, including subcontractors and partners.  The project would involve teams across dozens of disciplines from designers and engineers to ecologists, but while they would all be fulfilling different roles, they would all need to use much of the same geospatial information to make informed decisions.   

BBV evaluated multiple different geographic information system (GIS) solutions, selecting Esri’s ArcGIS suite because it provides the versatility that the business needs to create a variety of solutions for different groups of users.  From the outset, BBV opted to use ArcGIS in a Managed Cloud Services environment, to remove the need for on-premise IT infrastructure.  In doing so, it gained peace of mind from knowing that the GIS platform is being constantly monitored and supported by Esri UK’s GIS experts.     

“The biggest benefit of an Esri UK Managed Services contract is the support,” says Faisal Khan, GIS Manager at BBV.  “Our GIS platform is being monitored and maintained by experts who really understand geospatial data, can react quickly to any issues and have the knowledge to answer any questions that we might have.”  

Within twelve months, BBV created 15 interactive ArcGIS apps, 14 ArcGIS Dashboards, 8 ArcGIS StoryMaps and 11 other geospatial tools.  In total, within the first year, BBV amassed over 2,500 ArcGIS users.  The majority of the ArcGIS apps and dashboards have been developed for specific teams, giving them the precise functionality that they need to undertake their roles as efficiently as possible.  The ArcGIS StoryMaps often accompany dashboards and are used to give employees, subcontractors and partners a shared understanding of importance aspects of the project, such as achieving a net zero impact on biodiversity.  BBV also uses ArcGIS Pro to create maps for the community engagement team, helping it to advise local people about road closures and works in the region. 

Timely design changes to reduce excess costs
Through the use of ArcGIS, BBV can make up-to-date information from ground investigations and site surveys available to designers more promptly. This enables potential issues, such as unexpected ground contamination, to be captured and incorporated into designs earlier, rather than having last minute changes that could be more costly. “You can never completely eliminate the need for design changes on a project as large and complex as HS2, but if you remove issues before construction work starts on site, it helps to keep the project within the tight construction budgets,” Khan says.

Improved health and safety on construction sites
ArcGIS helps to improve health and safety by enabling employees and subcontractors to view the geographic context of sites, alongside computer-aided design (CAD) plans and other project data on potential hazards, all in one place, before they go there. In addition, senior managers use an ArcGIS dashboard to view scheduled works at each location along the railway route within the next four weeks. The dashboard automatically creates an alert if two contractors or two activities are scheduled simultaneously in the same location, so managers can consider safety implications and reschedule activities to protect workers if necessary.

Informed decision making to keep the project on schedule
The tailored ArcGIS apps and dashboards give different groups of users the information that they need to make well-informed planning decisions and help keep the complex, multi-phased project on schedule. For example, employees can use ArcGIS to click on land parcels, see what land is in BBV possession and where land access is needed, so that the necessary acquisitions and access permissions can be secured well ahead of time, to prevent unnecessary delays. Equally, employees can refer to a dashboard to see historic weather patterns, and use this insight to plan the best times for works to take place.

Effective coordination of hundreds of teams
The suite of ArcGIS solutions helps BBV to coordinate the work of multiple subcontractors and prevent unnecessary duplication of activity. For example an ArcGIS web app developed for the ground investigations team shows where boreholes have already been drilled and where new ones are proposed, so different subcontractors do not drill in the same areas. “We can have hundreds of teams working along BBV’s section of HS2 simultaneously,” Khan says. “ArcGIS gives everyone shared access to the same information and prevents unnecessary duplication of tasks, which improves the overall efficiency of the project.”

Creating an atlas of the coastline of the whole island of Ireland was a long-standing ambition of Robert Devoy.  He assembled a team of co-editors, including Val Cummins, Barry Brunt, Darius Bartlett and Sarah Kandrot, and invited people from Ireland and beyond to contribute information to the atlas based on their areas of expertise.  The contributors included academics across the fields of geography, ecology, climate change, geology, geomorphology, marine environments, industry, economics, culture and heritage.

“We wanted to bring together a huge variety of coastal data from across the whole of academia and present it in a way that would be accessible and meaningful for the general public,” says Sarah Kandrot, co-editor and cartographer.  “Because the atlas has explicitly all-island coverage, this often meant we had to bring together datasets that originated in each of the two jurisdictions, with all the challenges of data (non-) interoperability that implies.”

Kandrot selected Esri’s ArcGIS solution and utilised this software on the desktop to create over 500 clear, attractive and informative maps to illustrate the atlas. The use of a professional geographic information system (GIS) enabled Kandrot to easily combine vast datasets, often in different formats, from a wide variety of sources, ranging from individual researchers to government agencies in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, as well as the EU. She could use specialist geospatial tools within ArcGIS to analyse and filter the data, view patterns and highlight key coastal issues.

Addressing an incredibly diverse range of topics, the maps illustrate everything from how critical habitats for seabirds are diminishing to how coastal communities were impacted by the great Irish famine of 1845-1852. Some maps plot the locations of coastal leisure facilities, such as golf courses and blue flag beaches, while others show the extent of search and rescue operations, the urbanisation of coastal cities over successive decades and the sites of prehistoric tombs and standing stones.

Following the publication of the Coastal Atlas of Ireland, Kandrot used Esri’s ArcGIS Online to create a StoryMap, enabling people explore some of the maps and themes featured in the publication in more detail online. Comprising interactive maps, stunning imagery from professional and amateur photographers, and narratives written by subject experts, the StoryMap can be accessed free of charge by anyone. “The ArcGIS StoryMap provides extra information and an added dimension that the printed publication cannot give,” Kandrot says. “It is a great complement to the atlas.”

Top quality illustrations for a top quality publication
The maps created with ArcGIS are an essential part of the Coastal Atlas of Ireland.  Produced in full colour, the maps add clarity and interest to the atlas and have contributed significantly to its success. In the 2021 An Post Irish Book Awards, the atlas was named the Journal.ie Best Irish Published Book of the Year.

Complex, professional maps created easily
The use of ArcGIS enabled Kandrot to easily consolidate data from the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and work with data in different formats to create consistent all-island maps. She could also manipulate the data and filter out the data that she didn’t need, in order to focus on coastal areas specifically. For example, she was able to use ArcGIS to show the locations of tower houses (15^th-17^th century fortified residences) that are within 5km of the coast.

Improved awareness of all-Ireland coastal issues
The diversity of the maps in the atlas helps to arouse the general public’s interest in different aspects of Ireland’s coast and draw attention to a wide range of topics, affecting coastal areas around the whole island of Ireland. One unusual and fascinating map shows the thousands of miles travelled by five seals around the coast of Ireland and beyond. “ArcGIS has enabled me to bring information to life and create maps to help people understand a variety of coastal issues,” Kandot says.

Bonus information to explore beyond the pages
The ArcGIS StoryMap enables people to delve into more detail about some of the topics covered in the atlas, providing significant added value from the project. For example, people can zoom into maps of Machair habitats, one of the rarest kinds of coastal habitat in Europe, to see satellite imagery of what they look like, as well as where they are. People can also use the StoryMap to compare different sets of data on one screen, something that is more difficult to do by flicking over pages in the printed publication.

Clear understanding of the challenges for the future
The Coastal Atlas of Ireland, together with the StoryMap, shine a light on climate change, the impact it is already having on Ireland’s coast and how we must adapt to it.  “The maps in the printed publication and the StoryMap put the facts about climate change into context and promote discussion about what we must do to manage it,” Kandrot says. “The huge amount of interest that we have seen in the Coastal Atlas of Ireland gives me hope for the future that people will take coastal climate change seriously.”

Fusion was appointed in 2016 to carry out essential preparatory works along a 100 km section of the route for the new High Speed 2 (HS2) railway line.  The contract includes everything from clearing sites and diverting utilities to creating new habitats for newts and investigating archaeology.   

The joint venture’s vision is to connect people, but it soon became clear that this was going to be a particular challenge on the HS2 project.  Over sixty different contractors and subcontractors with different specialisms were involved in undertaking engineering, ecology and archaeology surveys and implementing ground preparation and remediation works.  Fusion needed to be able to share up-to-date information with people from all of these separate companies, as well as HS2, Natural England and the civil engineering organisation leading the next stage in the railway’s construction.   

Fusion selected Esri’s ArcGIS solution, opting to subscribe to a Managed Cloud Service provided by Esri UK.  ArcGIS quickly became Fusion’s main asset management system for the HS2 project, enabling Fusion to better manage and share all of the building information management (BIM) data that it needs to coordinate the project, as well as deliver contractually to HS2.   

Now, Fusion’s core ArcGIS web portal is used by over 750 users from Fusion, its contractors, HS2 and other third parties.  With new data added daily, ArcGIS allows Fusion to manage, visualise and share over 500 information layers on everything from ecology and archaeology to flood zones and land ownership.  Everyone can see the same up-to-date data, zoom into a specific area on the digital map and turn on the layers, to better understand where preparatory works are needed, why they are needed and when these works have been completed.  

In addition to the main ArcGIS web portal, Fusion has developed a number of smaller ArcGIS web apps to meet the needs of specific teams or support discrete business processes.  One of these apps allows Fusion to manage land access and pass on land ownership to the principal contractor responsible for managing the next phase in the construction of HS2.  Another app, the Ecology Viewer, allows people to view, in one place, all the data collected in ecology surveys by multiple organisations.  It enables everyone to more easily see, for example, the species of bat that roost in the vicinity of the HS2 route, the badger sets that need to be relocated and the nest boxes that have been installed for barn owls.  

Graham Starling, Information Manager at Fusion, says: “Esri UK has provided an excellent level of service throughout the project lifecycle, from being adaptable to changing requirements during project implementation and providing efficient and effective remedial actions when issues arose during delivery, through to providing consultation and recommendation during demobilization and archiving.  I would highly recommend this ArcGIS managed service for other similar projects.” 

Effective collaboration between people in 60+ organisations
ArcGIS significantly improves collaboration on this large-scale project by making it easy for people across many different organisations to share and view up-to-date information. With a better understanding of the area, everyone involved can take appropriate measures to protect heritage sites, avoid disturbing animals during key breeding times, and abide by the law by not inadvertently crossing land that is private. “In a project like HS2 that involves a vast number of contractors and other third parties, ArcGIS keeps everyone in the loop,” says Tom Wicks, BIM manager at Fusion. “Multi-disciplinary teams from many different companies can all share the same data and collaborate effectively to complete work to a high standard.”

Improved cost and resource management
By using ArcGIS to undertake geospatial analysis, Fusion is better able to estimate resource requirements for specific works and manage costs across the entire contract. For example, the organisation uses ArcGIS to analyse the density of bats and trees in particular locations and make comparisons between different sections of the route. It can then share this data with HS2 and use it internally to help it accurately gauge the cost of tree works or ecology interventions in different locations, and allocate the required resources based on up-to-date data from the field.

Greater efficiency in key business processes
The small GIS team at Fusion has been able to develop a series of ArcGIS apps that improve the efficiency of key business processes. For example, it has created a form-based app using ArcGIS Survey123 that enables people to capture details about any works needed and insert ArcGIS polygon drawings from the web portal. This detailed ground plan can then be shared with HS2 and other partners, within ArcGIS, accelerating decision making and works scheduling. “Having an Esri UK Managed Cloud Service frees time in the GIS team so that we can do geospatial analysis and build high value GIS apps that improve efficiency across the whole project,” says Wicks.

Faster resolution of snagging issues
As in all large projects of this type, small issues will inevitably arise that need attention, such as broken fence panels. In the past, these snagging issues were recorded in different ways, by different companies, in different spreadsheets without accurate location data. Now, information is recorded in a consistent way, by all parties, using ArcGIS Collector, and the data can be viewed by Fusion in near real-time on an ArcGIS Dashboard. “Having this data in real time, means snags can be sorted as soon as possible,” Wicks explains.

To help safeguard fish stocks in European waters and protect marine eco-systems, the European Union (EU) needs to have accurate information about the volume (number and weight) of key fish species caught annually in European waters. Consequently, all EU member states are now required to report, not only on commercial fishing, but also on recreational sea angling.

As the organisation responsible for recreational angling in Ireland, Inland Fisheries Ireland needed to find a way to gather and share accurate data from a representative proportion of the 250,000 anglers who fish in many locations, along more than 3,000 kilometres of coastline. To complement sea angling data gathered by the Inland Fisheries Ireland survey team, a further approach was needed that would allow and encourage anglers to self-report their catches.

Inland Fisheries Ireland had been using geographic information system (GIS) solutions from Esri for many years and already had a mobile ArcGIS app that was used by deep-sea charter angling boat skippers for reporting for a Bluefin tuna catch, tag and release programme. With this experience, the organisation came up with a concept for an inclusive GIS-based survey that would engage anglers as citizen scientists. It then appointed consultants from Esri Ireland’s Professional Services group to act as advisors and help it deliver this novel method of marine data collection.

A key component of Irish Marine Recreational Angling Survey (IMREC), the GIS-based solution includes an ArcGIS Survey123 app, which anglers use on their mobile phones, tablets or computers, to capture data on how many fish they caught, what size and species they were, how many fish they released and how long they fished for. All the data captured is then transferred automatically, with no manual intervention, to Esri’s ArcGIS Hub Premium, a community data sharing platform that allows multiple stakeholders to contribute and view selected data online. A management dashboard in the Hub allows Inland Fisheries Ireland to monitor data collection activities, see estimated catch rates and identify patterns in the species, volumes and weight of fish caught.

In addition, all of the anglers that join the scheme have a personalised dashboard within ArcGIS Hub Premium on which they can see the data that they have contributed, whether they are shore anglers, small boat anglers or anglers who charter larger deep-sea vessels. Anglers can use their personalised dashboard to create online diaries of their own fishing activities and look back over time to understand where and when they had the most success. Personalised dashboards are not shared with other anglers or people outside of Inland Fisheries Ireland, so anglers can protect the secrecy of their favourite and most successful fishing spots.

More people proactively engaged in data collection
Inland Fisheries Ireland expects to be able to encourage large numbers of anglers to take part in the IMREC diary-based survey, partly because the Survey123 app is very easy for anglers to use, on any device. In addition, ArcGIS Hub Premium can be scaled up easily to accept data up-loads from more and more participants, allowing Inland Fisheries Ireland to gradually expand the scheme over time. “ArcGIS will enable us to recruit lots of anglers as citizen scientists and crowdsource the large volume of data that we require for EU reporting,” says William Roche, Senior Research Officer at Inland Fisheries Ireland. “With more people collecting data, we will be able to build up a better picture of the state of fish stocks off Ireland’s coast, particularly for anglers.”

Effective retention of anglers in the crowd-sourcing scheme
Through the development of personalised dashboards in ArcGIS Hub Premium, Inland Fisheries Ireland has created an effective way to retain the interest and involvement of anglers in the IMREC survey. Anglers are often keen diarists, and Inland Fisheries Ireland anticipates that they will enjoy using their dashboards to record and visualise their fishing success month after month. “The ArcGIS personalised dashboards will help to make the recording of data a habitual activity for anglers,” Roche explains. “We hope anglers will enjoy entering their catch data and take pride in their role as observers and stewards of Ireland’s fish stocks.”

Accurate, consistent data collected from all around Ireland
As all anglers, all around the country, are using the same Survey123 app to record their data, Inland Fisheries Ireland can have greater confidence in the accuracy and consistency of the data collected. The app accurately records location data, and survey questions can be easily amended if needed. The EU is particularly interested in data on cod, pollock, sharks, rays, sea bass and highly migratory species such as tuna, but Survey123 can be configured to capture data on other species too, giving Inland Fisheries Ireland flexibility for the future.

Supplementary data to support EU reporting requirements
Most significantly, ArcGIS has provided Inland Fisheries Ireland with a feasible and affordable way to capture additional data to complement the other data collected for the EU. Citizen science like this provides broad spatial coverage all around the coastline of Ireland. Linked with data from face-to-face interviews with anglers, the GIS solution minimises data handling and automatically displays reporting information on the management dashboard, which will enable Inland Fisheries Ireland to comply with EU data collection requirements in a very efficient way.