What happened when SEPA put GeoField on the frontline with their operational staff?

Since April, field staff at the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) have been evaluating GeoField as part of their Priority Catchments Project. Dr. Jonathan Bowes, Senior Data Analyst/Modeller at SEPA, comments, ‘The pilot has attracted a great deal of attention across SEPA as this concept of paperless field work is applicable right across the board at SEPA. Potentially it could revolutionise major parts of SEPA’s business under the “spend to save and improve” umbrella.’

Among Dr Bowes’ key findings were that trials offered a comfortable introduction to electronic data collection for the operational staff and that feedback from the staff meant that GeoField could be tweaked to

improve performance of the system. ‘We selected GeoField as it is lightweight, simple and fully customisable to SEPA’s business needs,’ says Dr Bowes.

‘The pilot aimed to prove the concept of paper replacement for field surveys. This pilot simply needed to highlight the efficiency savings in time and therefore money, as well as the raft of other benefits that a digital capture system would bring to SEPA systems.’