The Client
The Environment Agency is a government organisation that works to improve and protect the environment. Established in 1996, the agency is responsible for regulating major industry and waste, treatment of contaminated land, water quality and resources, fisheries, inland rivers, estuary and harbour navigations and conservation and ecology.
The Problem
Part of the Environment Agency’s remit is to manage the risk of flooding from main rivers. In accordance with this, the Environment Agency has a collection of hydrometric charts that measure river levels spanning several decades. The Environment Agency required us to digitise 121 chart years from stations throughout England dating from the 1960s.
What We Did
The charts came in several different formats, which included; weekly charts, monthly charts and yearly charts. These were also in several different scales, ranging from 1:5 to 1:20. Despite some of the hard copies being badly water damaged, our experienced data capture personnel were still able to process them.
All charts were pre–edited prior to data capture processing as part of our extensive QA procedures. This included the checking and recording of on/off points, time and levels and stop checks. Each chart captured was further quality checked for situations where reversals of shits occurred to make sure these had been recorded correctly.
All data was captured using the Kisters ‘WISKI–Digitiisation application DIGIT’ in the desired zrxp (tect file) format. All hard copy charts were scanned at 200dpi master TIFF from which derivative PDF images were created for access use.
Upon completion, each batch i.e. the data file, TIFF and PDF files were exported and delivered to the Environment Agency along with the hard copy file.
The Benefits
- The Environment Agency is now able to easily access their historical data
- Captured data can now be used to calculate averages, flood and droughts over specified periods
- Time taken to complete these tasks has been reduced from weeks/months to minutes
- A secure digital backup of their charts will ensure the Environment Agency never loses access to their historical records
- Documents can be accessed by multiple staff at the same time
- Digitally capturing the charts will help to preserve them from further damage