Meeting the Environment Agency's delivery needs

By John Wills & Andy Wells

Background

Over the past decade, most government bodies have faced a rapid expansion of their core tasks. Apart from having to manage an increasing range of source data, the need to deliver a broader range of services to a wider audience has dominated agendas. At the same time, the ubiquitous rise of web and mobile technologies has raised the expectations of the Client base (from members of the public to other government bodies) as to the speed of access and simplicity of use.

More recently, the whole arena of geospatial data provision has become yet further challenged by the introduction of the INSPIRE Directive. This Directive's additional requirements in terms of format, specification and access has further complicated and challenged the role of governmental delivery agents. In the UK, the creation of the Location Strategy, the launch of www.data.gov.uk, the INSPIRE requirement for a UK geo portal and other initiatives all clearly demonstrate the movement towards more flexible, open sharing of data.

For the Environment Agency, all of the above are pertinent. As one of the most important statutory agencies in the UK, with responsibility for protecting and improving the environment, and promoting sustainable development, the Environment Agency is directly affected by these developments.

Data delivery

Perhaps best known for its role in flood risk management and mapping, the Environment Agency has traditionally delivered a range of products and services to its partners and to the general public. Among these partners, Local Authorities are key to the delivery of Surface Water Management Plans, Strategic Flood Risk Assessments (Strategic Flood Consequence Assessments in Wales), Emergency Planning and Planning Consents (e.g. for third party developers based upon site specific flood risk assessments, or flood consequence assessments in Wales). Only 10 years ago some of the Environment Agency's partners were still requesting data, such as the Indicative Flood Plain Map, in paper format. More recently, delivery of the Environment Agency's data to local authorities and other partners has been via CD/DVD, with updates supplied as they became available. Whilst this process has worked quite well, there have been a number of challenges:

Due to cost, complexity and technical issues, the Environment Agency had to fix the delivery route, methodology and format, although updates were only delivered where changes were identified within a partner's area of interest.Data was delivered to a single representative in each organisation and then distributed internally. This caused local authorities to incur additional costs in distributing the data to multiple individuals internally. On occasion, data also 'went missing' internally, necessitating re-supply by the Environment Agency.Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the approach did not meet the requirements set out in the INSPIRE Directive, which specifies a completely different approach to information access.

Therefore in 2008, the Environment Agency sought the help of a supplier in order to help it develop a brand new – client focussed – delivery agenda. The Invitation to Tender was focussed on a range of pilot projects including the online delivery of Environment Agency data. The Agency also specified that the route selected must be flexible enough to meet the metadata, discovery and view services requirements of the INSPIRE Directive in the future.

Infoterra

Infoterra was delighted to be awarded the contract to support the Environment Agency. For the past 20 years, Infoterra has offered services for the delivery of geospatial data from its hosting centre. Prior to the availability of web technology, this was undertaken by the placement of orders and the delivery of physical media (CDs, tapes etc.), with much of the data delivered being satellite imagery. In the last 5-6 years, this capability has been greatly expanded to create one of Europe's largest commercial data hosting centres, managing over 150 terabyte (TB) of mapping data online, with a further 1500 TB on near-line robotic tape storage.

Part of Infoterra's capability is an online service called GeoStore. This allows users to log onto a secure site, view the data required, request a copy of the data in various formats and access it immediately via online delivery. It was this proven delivery capability that the Environment Agency was interested in using and customising for their own purposes.

Initial Pilot project

Focussing on two parts of the initial pilot project, one part was the delivery of an INSPIRE View service (also commonly referred to as a Web Map Service - WMS) capable of delivering Pan Government Agreement (PGA) and Environment Agency data both internally and to other agencies. The second and perhaps most important part was the development of an INSPIRE Download service (called DataShare) to deliver Environment Agency data to the Agency's partners and customers.

The initial pilot ran for 9 months and successfully delivered over one thousand customer orders. Initial feedback was very positive and following review, a number of improvements were requested.

Following a brief and rapid programme of customisation, the enhanced system was launched to local authorities in May 2009. This system allowed users to:

Log onto a secure site
View the data layers for the geographic area for which they are licensed
View (zoom & pan) the live data prior to order
Place an order for any of the data layers for which they are licensed
Select the required data format
Confirm acceptance of the Environment Agency's licence terms and conditions
Subject to size, order the data for online delivery (via an FTP site) and access within 5-10 minutes of starting the process, or request delivery on CD/DVD.

This approach has not only saved the Environment Agency money in terms of servicing the increasing needs of their customers and partners, but has also provided an audit trail to show which customers have ordered/downloaded data. For business critical datasets like the Environment Agency's Flood Map this allows focussed communications to partners to ensure that only current versions of datasets are utilised. Moreover, the Agency now has a reliable method of ensuring that the data gets directly to those who need it with the correct license/guidance information and for geographic areas for which the user is licensed.

Perhaps the best evidence of the system's success is the take up. The system is now in its second year and in the last 12 months has delivered over 4,000 orders to almost 2,000 registered users. Interestingly, over 96% of orders have been for online delivery; proof that acceptance of online services is increasing as the deadline for INSPIRE compliance approaches.

Development

The initial layers placed on DataShare were the Environment Agency's Flood Map, Historic Flood Map and Areas Susceptible to Surface Water Flooding data. These were seen as the priority data layers for delivery to the user base. However, following the success of the initial pilot, the following data has been added:

Main Rivers
Detailed River Network
Water Framework Datasets (12 spatial and 2 non-spatial layers)
National Receptors Database
Further data will also be available to partners via DataShare shortly, including:
Historic Landfill
Flood Map for Surface Water - 1:200 Rainfall
Flood Map for Surface Water - 1:30 Rainfall
Historic Surface Water and Groundwater Flooding
National Flood Risk Assessment (NaFRA) Spatial Flood Likelihood Grid
NAFRA Postcode Flood Likelihood Database
NAFRA Property Flood Likelihood Database

In addition to the layers added, the Environment Agency has also sought to improve the level of service by increasing the functionality of DataShare, with the addition of, for example, user reporting and more advanced data layer control.

Finally, but significantly, with Infoterra's support, the Environment Agency is also trialling the delivery of INSPIRE View services (WMS) to a number of its customers. Initial feedback shows that this route can provide an even better way of accessing the Environment Agency's data. From, the Agency's perspective, it also provides a way of ensuring that customers are using the latest version of the data available.

The future

As outlined above, due to the success of the pilot project, the Environment Agency is now seeking to increase the number of layers available on DataShare. The early involvement of Infoterra in the Agency's INSPIRE implementation plans, and the selection of technology that was likely to be INSPIRE compliant (once the various INSPIRE specifications had been defined), has reduced the risk associated with meeting the requirements of the INSPIRE Directive. On current evidence, it is believed that the Environment Agency will become one of the first major government organisations to be INSPIRE compliant.

Does the work stop here? – not necessarily... As technology develops, the delivery of data and information must also be able to develop. As increasing number of users seek to access data services rather than hard copy information, the Environment Agency is leading the way in meeting this need.

Benefits and savings

In the austere times we all face, delivering cost effective services is paramount whilst at the same time reacting to the changing user needs and meeting wider regulatory requirements. Infoterra has helped the Environment Agency achieve these aims by:

Leveraging existing capability , thus minimising initial development costs
Reducing the cost of data delivery
Reducing the risk associated with delivery of government data
Increasing the speed at which data can be provided to partners and, in the near future, the Environment Agency's own contractors
Future-proofing against the requirements of the INSPIRE Directive whilst also delivering the services required today
Using a platform already being used by a number of government bodies, thereby sharing costs and minimising duplication.