The Rights of Way network in Calderdale comprises nearly 1,400km of moorland, steep valleys, and urban areas. The fieldwork was completed in three months, using a team of five surveyors armed with rugged tablets using our CAMS Mobile app. Our surveyors collected information on every furniture item and every issue/problem and captured over 27,000 photos. This gave officers at Calderdale Council a complete picture of their public rights of way.

Rather than simply handing back static report files, Exegesis loaded all the information from the survey into our new cloud-based CAMS Pro solution. This provides powerful searching capabilities, interactive mapping and photos integrated via LibraryLink in an accessible, intuitive website interface. But CAMS Pro is more than just an interface for viewing the survey data; it also includes tools for prioritising the issues, assigning tasks to officers, and tracking the progress of issues through to completion. A wide range of reports can be run from the system, and the interactive map allows the information to be visualised in different ways. In addition, CAMS Pro facilitates engagement with the public by allowing Calderdale Council to easily publish their register of applications for Definitive Map Modification Orders & Public Path Orders. To help keep the data up to date when working in the field, we also provided Calderdale Council with CAMS Mobile for their own use as well, allowing offline edits to the data, and synchronising directly with their CAMS Pro system when signal is available.

This project provided Calderdale Council with a comprehensive, up to date dataset of their public rights of way, along with easy-to-use tools to enable them to manage the data and to get the most value from it.

Further information from Timothy Derbyshire

Given the dynamic nature of the sand dune habitat, it was not possible to use historical mapping, MasterMap or any of the datasets that are normally used for digitising Rights of Way networks. We instead used the most recent available aerial photography to identify and capture the walked lines of the paths.

Once the network had been captured, it was loaded to the CAMS Mobile solution for the fieldwork. This allowed the surveyor to capture details of the furniture items and issues on the network, using the tablet's GPS to assist with positioning and capturing images on the tablet's camera. The data, including the digitised network, were then all synchronised back into the client's CAMS dataset, with all the photos linked to the records.

Further information from Timothy Derbyshire.

Exegesis was commissioned by GeoPlace in 2019 to build findmystreet.co.uk, a public web platform to publish the National Street Gazetteer (NSG). The NSG is used by local authorities, statutory undertakers, contractors and anyone who needs to work with official street information in England and Wales.

findmystreet.co.uk publishes information about the location of a street, its official name and who is responsible for the maintenance of the street.

The site is built using the cloudscribe content management system with a backend process which draws down the complex NSG data and processes it into a user-friendly interactive map and separate list format.

Further information from Crispin Flower.

Exegesis was commissioned by Zero Waste Scotland (ZWS) to develop a website and mobile app, plus the underlying database and API, to enable local authorities and other stakeholders in Scotland to monitor litter and fly-tipping incidents.

ZWS is the body responsible for reducing waste and promoting a circular economy in Scotland and has been a FlyMapper partner organisation since 2013. The Litter Monitoring System (LMS) took the pre-existing functionality of FlyMapper and added the ability to record and analyse detailed surveys of street litter. These surveys are used to support the requirements of the Scottish Government's Code of Practice on Litter and Refuse (CoPLAR).

The LMS mobile app is built using Xamarin, a cross-platform development tool that allows the sharing of a codebase between Android and iOS app versions.

The LMS web site allows management of both the fly-tipping and litter monitoring elements and is built within a cloudscribe Content Management System. It already contains details of previously recorded fly-tipping incidents in Scotland.

Data taken from the Technical support for CoPLAR Land Zoning in Scotland project is imported into LMS as local authorities continue to come on-board.

Further information from Richard Griffiths.

The first stage was to digitise the route of the new section into the Authority's CAMS. This included correcting the alignment of the path against OS MasterMap and dividing the route into Link sections.

The data were then loaded to the CAMS Mobile table application for survey in the field. The information captured included spatial and text data on all the signage, gates seating and other furniture along the Trail, along with photographs. In addition, detailed information, including mapping and photographs, was captured of all problems encountered along the Thames Path.

The collected data were analysed and loaded into the client's CAMS solution, and copies of map layers, geo-tagged photos and reports were made available to Transport for London.

More information from Timothy Derbyshire.

The surveyor found the system easy to use in the field, and was impressed with the performance, GPS response and camera quality in the tablet. The 16% survey equated to about 140km of public rights of way, and this was completed in the field in just a couple of weeks.

After the fieldwork was successfully completed, the data were synchronised into the authority's CAMS system, allowing them to generate reports and plan for the future maintenance of the network.

Further information from Timothy Derbyshire

The first part was a review of the available historic and cultural data, along with options for using them and the opportunities for public engagement in this area. We contacted a number of potential data holders by phone and email to discuss the data they held and how it could be used within the Long Forest project. Much of this information was only available in non-digital formats, but we identified several potentially very useful digital datasets and the options for utilising them. We also considered the opportunities for engaging the public through historic and cultural data dissemination and collection.

The second part was a review of the available options for a website and mobile app. As the project was still in an early stage, the Long Forest project team had no preconceived ideas regarding these, so we were able to fully explore all the possibilities. This included practical considerations, such as which platforms to use, how to implement bilingual display and the use of social media, as well as specific functionality that the website and mobile app could have. Options included:

• Crowd sourced mapping of extant and historic hedgerows
• A hedgerow survey mobile app with an integrated plant identification tool and associated web-based survey management
• Event management, covering everything from talks to practical hedgerow management sessions
• The use of Quick Response (QR) codes placed around the countryside to alert mobile app users to features of interest and present them with relevant information
• Games to engage the interest of all ages, some of which could also be used to generate useful data

Mock-ups were created for the crowdsourced mapping of hedgerows and the hedgerow survey app.

Further information from Crispin Flower.

The client required an affordable, mobile system for data gathering in the field. A key requirement was the ability to synchronise the data wirelessly with CAMS Desktop in the office from anywhere at any time.

CAMS Mobile gives you:

• Live data collection in the field
• Portable, lightweight Smartphone / tablet
• Fast, accurate GPS
• Fast, simple recording of data
• Mapping and intuitive forms
• In-built camera
• Seamless data sync 

CAMS Mobile is ideal for:

• Carrying-out condition surveys
• Ad hoc recording of work
• Information resource in your pocket
• Populating asset registers
• Recording issues
• Recording details of site visits

Download a flyer. Further information is available from Simon Allen.

The development and User Acceptance Testing were undertaken rapidly to allow the volunteer surveyors to get out in the field as soon as possible - five weeks from design to deployment! The results were hugely positive with nearly 800 surveys quickly completed and all surveyors enjoying the process.

The National Park Conservation Officer concluded that this project had shown the way for future Heritage at Risk surveying, with significant advantages over previous methodologies.

In 2014 we are enhancing the app for a new round of surveying.

See also the Ordnance Survey case study. Further information from Crispin Flower.

Find out more about FlyMapper.

The system is currently in use by 12 Local Authorities in Scotland and 15 in Wales and had recorded over 80,000 fly-tipping incidents since 2014.

FlyMapper has two components: FlyMapper Web and FlyMapper Mobile. These are two ‘views’ onto the same dataset (if you add a record on the mobile you see it on web and vice versa):

FlyMapper Mobile:

• Smartphone app utilising GPS
• Simple to use
• Works on Android and iOS devices
• Works on and off-line (using local mapping)

FlyMapper Web – similar functionality to the mobile app plus:

• User registration management
• Analysis and reporting
• Data export
• WMS
• Optimised for office use on standard web browsers

Further information is available from Richard Griffiths.

Support is provided for entering data as CMSi monitoring projects associated with a site and for incidental records collected by volunteers. The module features a range of input forms that can be customised to suit a variety of recording needs. Data can be browsed from an intuitive tree interface, filtered, and viewed in the standard map window alongside other CMSi layers.

In addition, sophisticated reports can be specified using a wizard, which are then generated within the module and exported to GIS.

The system includes a mobile app (iOS, Android and Windows) and an API to communicate with the backend CMSi system. The mobile app is used by field surveyors throughout the GBNL consortium on iPads and a range of Android tablets. The surveyors record observations and sync these with the backend CMSi database. They typically deal with many thousands of observations and species dictionaries and data volumes are quite large.

The mobile app is map-centric and uses the device GPS and offline mapping for the entire country. The app also provides more advanced control over the map layers and allows additional KML and ESRI shape files to be imported and overlaid by the end user.