New legislation in the UK has focused attention on biodiversity in large development and infrastructure projects. Organisations now need to minimise their impacts on the environment while also delivering a sustained habitat improvement, known as biodiversity net gain (BNG). Complying with the new laws is a multifaceted undertaking, particularly in large infrastructure works, but creative GIS professionals including David D’Andrea are using ArcGIS to cut through the complexity.
D'Andrea is a Geographic Information System (GIS) Developer at the joint venture organisation Balfour Beatty VINCI. He moved from North East France to Birmingham in the UK in 2021 to support the delivery of a 90 kilometre stretch of Britain’s new high-speed railway, HS2, known as Area North. There, he works alongside the environmental and ecology teams, helping them to use GIS to collect, view, edit, analyse and share environmental data. His role, he says, “is to make colleagues’ jobs easier,” and, without any doubt, he is doing this in the case of improving biodiversity reporting.
A much more central role for biodiversity
The new BNG laws came into effect in the UK in February 2024 and compel organisations to leave wildlife habitats in a better condition after development projects than before, delivering a 10% net gain in biodiversity. While this legislation is new, organisations in the construction, infrastructure design and development industries have been collecting environmental data and restoring nature for many years. Indeed, the HS2 project was one of the first projects to adopt a biodiversity accounting approach and set No Net Loss (NNL) targets back in 2013.
The focus on biodiversity and nature has been growing steadily throughout D’Andrea’s career. Prior to joining the Balfour Beatty VINCI joint venture, he worked for thirteen years at VINCI, on projects including the A19 motorway near Paris, the Tour-Bordeaux high speed railway and a motorway improvement scheme near Strasbourg. A vast amount of data about habitats and species was collected and processed in these early-career projects, but as D’Andrea says, “Biodiversity now has a much more central role.”
In the Area North section of HS2, Balfour Beatty VINCI is required to measure impacts on biodiversity using the NNL methodology, the precursor to BNG, which was specifically tailored to HS2 through consultation with DEFRA and Natural England. Carrying out the accurate biodiversity accounting calculations required poses a particular challenge for Balfour Beatty VINCI due to the scale of the HS2 project. Along the Area North route in the Midlands, Balfour Beatty VINCI is constructing 11 kilometres of viaducts, 62 overbridges, 28 underbridges, 62 embankments, 34 cuttings, 11 underpasses and 4 tunnels.
An innovative biodiversity accounting dashboard
To support this incredibly large project, D’Andrea developed a new dashboard-based approach to managing biodiversity using Esri’s ArcGIS Pro software. His idea was to collate all project data relating to the ecology of the area, from the organisation’s central ArcGIS Enterprise system, and present it in an interactive ArcGIS Operations Dashboard. He designed and built the solution collaboratively, working with colleagues in the environmental, GIS and ecology teams to make sure that it would meet their requirements.
Now in daily use, D’Andrea’s biodiversity dashboard provides ecologists with clear oversight of local biodiversity data, while enabling them to drill down to see detailed information. They can view the latest landscape designs and track project impacts by habitat or location. The dashboard includes analytical tools, enabling team members to see live data quickly and easily.
In particular, the biodiversity dashboard enables Balfour Beatty VINCI to be responsive to the environment in which the HS2 project is taking place. For example, using the dashboard, employees were able to identify the spread usage of a biodiversity grass mix, replace it with a more efficient one, and increase the resulting biodiversity score by 5%. “The biodiversity dashboard simplifies data and gives everyone a better and faster view of it,” D’Andrea explains.
A lever for improving biodiversity
The biodiversity dashboard has quickly become a critical tool for planning zero biodiversity net loss and monitoring biodiversity across the Area North section of HS2. Balfour Beatty VINCI is now reviewing more biodiversity data, more often and in real time. As a result, environmental and ecology teams can make faster interventions, informed decisions and more frequent design reviews to improve biodiversity.
Within the biodiversity dashboard, the 2,800-hectare project area is divided up into 40,000 polygons, each of which is colour-coded to show its biodiversity status, compared to baseline surveys conducted in 2017. Green polygons are the most nature-rich areas, while red polygons are typically built areas with little biodiversity, such as maintenance sites. “Already, just three and a half years into the project, it is good to see so many green polygons!” observes D’Andrea.
The biodiversity dashboard clearly shows Balfour Beatty VINCI and its client, HS2, that significant progress has already been made in line with HS2 commitments to zero biodiversity net loss. “ArcGIS gives us a lever for improving biodiversity accounting on the project,” D’Andrea says.
A valuable tool for global projects
Such has been the success and impact of D’Andrea’s biodiversity dashboard that it has been nominated for a VINCI Innovation Award. Organised every two years, this internal awards programme aims to showcase the innovative work carried out by VINCI’s 280,000 employees, across 120 countries. As D’Andrea notes with pride, “VINCI is a very big, global company, so it is a real honour to be nominated for this award.”
D'Andrea hopes that the competition will help to raise awareness of the biodiversity dashboard within VINCI and lead to funding for this ArcGIS-based solution to be used more widely throughout the organisation, on other largescale development and infrastructure projects. “The biodiversity dashboard is working so well, is easy to deploy and adapt, and provides an all-in-one solution,” he says, adding, “Why wouldn’t VINCI want to use it more?”
While the new BNG legislation is specific to the UK, D’Andrea recognises that the challenge of improving biodiversity is a global one. He therefore believes that the biodiversity dashboard has the potential to deliver real value in projects all around the world, where the legislation may be different but the desire to monitor and improve biodiversity is comparable. “Infrastructure projects all around the world need to improve nature where possible and minimise impacts,” he says. “In the Area North section of the HS2 project, we have developed an ArcGIS-based approach to managing biodiversity that really works. I am delighted that the awards programme is giving me the opportunity to encourage more teams within VINCI to use it to add value in their projects.”
David D’Andrea, Balfour Beatty VINCI