Organising and Using Location Data in the Environment Agency

1. Organising and Using Location Data in the Environment Agency Stefan Carlyle Environment Agency for England and Wales 29th March 2012

2. Introduction • Location information (‘mapping’), is now used routinely across the Environment Agency (EA), our partners and our customers. • Without mapping the EA would be ineffective in: • Managing our response to incidents • Predicting or planning for the consequences of climate change • Meeting our legislative obligations such as the Floods Directive • Upholding our reputation as leading provider of environmental data • Planning or prioritising our work • It is estimated that mapping provides the EA an estimated benefit value of over £5m per annum, derived from productivity gains, cost avoidance and revenue from commercial re-use of geographic data.

3. Environment Agency’s Current capabilities

4. Operations • Management of incidents and emergencies • State of the Environment reporting • Issuing environmental permits • Regulating permitted sites • Producing maps for site visits • Mapping & Modelling in Fisheries • Environment & Business • River Basin Management • Workforce Planning • Management of fisheries • Conserving local wildlife • Water Resource Management • Regions • Preparing for Site Visits • Reporting & KPIs • Creating flood maps • Planning Control • Gold & Silver Control • Inspections and Monitoring • Capital Works planning • Hostile site locations Corporate Strategy • Flood and Coastal • Risk Management • Forecasting and warning • Managing and improving condition of Flood Defences • Taking account of the impact of climate change • Strategic development and control • Improving our response to flooding incidents • Providing Flood Risk assessments • Evidence • Maps & statistics for European and UK Directives • Providing information to the public via “WIYBY” • Providing information to internal staff via Easimap Maintaining core data sets for use across the Agency • Implementing our data strategy and Improving data quality • Sharing geographic data between partners • Finance & HR • Assigning payment to regions • Calculating maintenance costs of assets • Health & Safety maps

5. Benefits from use of Location Data

6. Types of Benefit: • Environmental Protection • Better Government and Public services • Efficiencies and cash savings by doing things that we could not do without mapping

7. 1. Helping to deliver our Corporate Strategy: • Incident Management • Asset Management • Improving Water Protection Zones • Impact on Soil Erosion • Modernising Regulation

8. Benefit Case Study - Incident Management Case Study - Responding to Emergencies Environment Agency, local authority staff, fire and rescue services, water companies and their associated contractors plus insurers and loss adjusters all used the most detailed geographic information to determine appropriate action following the torrential rainfall in both Yorkshire and central and southern England in summer 2007. Assessments were made using detailed topographic and height data of the extent of the area that would have been affected if the Ully Dam had burst; The definitive addresses within the affected area had to be included in the report so that emergency evacuation could start immediately Source: UK Location Strategy

9. Benefit Case Study - Asset Management Case Study – From scheduling local maintenance to supporting national investment strategies Maps showing routine maintenance work (below) are provided to contractors, detailing the work, and any access or health and safety issues to be considered Locations and condition of assets are recorded in the National Flood and Coastal Defence Database (NFCDD) GIS is then used to combine information from NFCDD with SAMPS data and to create a national view (right), which can be used as evidence for major investment decisions

10. 3. Within catchments, identify potential high impact crops e.g. Oilseed Benefit Case Study - Improving WPZs Identifying where we can improve water quality by influencing farming methods 1. Use DTM to define catchments 2. Identify which catchments drain into a priority site e.g. Drinking Water Protected Area 4. Run models to identify the impact (on water quality) of changing land-use (not yet completed)

11. Benefit Case Study– Impact on Soil Erosion National Erosion Map Across England the most impacted land use will be arable land, followed by managed grassland in the case of the 6m buffer strip this equates to approximately 1% of both arable and managed grassland

12. Benefit Case Study – Red Tape Challenge • Case Study – Easimap for National Permitting • Integrates data from across the organisation into one application • Includes ‘live’ data from other organisations • Can be used with minimum training • Produces consistent, auditable results • Massive efficiency savings. Time to process a permit has been reduced form days to minutes. • The Agency processes up to 10,000 permits per year • “It’s absolutely brilliant! It’s wonderful to receive something which makes the job so much easier” • Avril Varley-Brown, Permitting Officer

13. 2. Enabling Better Government • Red Tape Challenge Reducing inspections where environmental risks are low Improving speed and efficiency in the way we issue permits Better business planning e.g. Field Workforce Planning (FWP) which uses GIS routing to optimise inspection schedules • Supporting DEFRA Producing and maintaining Main River maps Coastal erosion maps, taking account of multiple scenarios for climate change Soil erosion maps, taking account of the impact of land-use and farming practices Providing data to MAGIC – the Multi Agency countryside data repository • Exercise Watermark The Agency is working to deliver the recommendations of the Exercise Watermark for which GIS is an essential enabler for the many recommendations • INSPIRE delivery and Open Data INSPIRE compliance and a pragmatic approach to Open Data will be of benefit to the Environment Agency in policy and operational areas, where shared and integratedplace-based information is valuable for decision making;

14. Benefit Examples - Improving Public Services • Protecting homes from flooding GIS is used to raise and issue flood warnings (Flood Warning Direct) Identify properties most at risk from flooding, plan improvements and issue appropriate advice • Enabling better access to Information The Agency provides a number of GIS based products to the public, including State of the Environment reports, Preliminary Flood Risk Assessments to support planning applications What’s in Your Backyard, a theme based map application that allows the public to view environmental data for their neighbourhood • National and Regional Customer Contact Centres (NCCC) NCCC are major users of GIS. Examples of usage include; Using a callers location to redirect calls to area based staff or duty officers in the event of an incident To provide standard Agency products such as Flood Risk assessment maps To accept, assess and process environmental permit applications To respond to information requests from partners and the general public

15. 3. Quantified Benefits • Staff efficiency and FTE savings • National Permitting • Processing planning applications • Automated data management • Faster mapping • Cost Avoidance • Reduced/quicker site visits • Re-use of Easimap and CDS = Less IT spend

16. Excludes additional but un-quantified benefits of reputation & legislative compliance Quantified annual benefits of mapping

17. Implementing Semantic Interoperability

18. Open Data

19. Open Data - DataShare

20. EA Search & Explore concept Just like Googling! Display and navigate on a map! Data? Maps? Modelling? What have we got? Data sets, services and applications EA Search Search e.g. water quality, Dorset Data set #1 [more info View Download] Data set #2 [more info View Download] Data set #3 [more info View Download] Meta data Maps / visuals#1 [more info View Access/Download] Maps / visuals#2 [more info View Access/Download] Maps / visuals#3 [more info View Access/Download] Modelling Package#1 [more info View Access/Download] Modelling Package#2 [more info View Access/Download] Modelling Package#3 [more info View Access/Download] Search identifies data, maps/visuals, and modelling packages we have across our organisation See & explore ‘item’ Could open pop up to show meta data for the ‘evidence item’ e.g. date created, who created, why created …….. Get copy of the evidence to use e.g. data set Search for things or places or a combination

21. Future Policy Delivery Public Data Group My Environment Data Quality Strategy European Directives UK Location Programme Transparency Open Data data.gov.uk Environmental Information Framework Government Data Review

22. Summary • Location information (‘mapping’), is now used routinely across the Environment Agency (EA), our partners and our customers. • Without mapping the EA would be ineffective in: • Managing our response to incidents • Predicting or planning for the consequences of climate change • Meeting our legislative obligations such as the Floods Directive • Upholding our reputation as leading provider of environmental data • Planning or prioritising our work • It is estimated that mapping provides the EA an estimated benefit value of over £5m per annum, derived from productivity gains, cost avoidance and revenue from commercial re-use of geographic data. • EA location data will be at the heart of making it an exemplar of pragmatic approach to Open Data and Transparency.