The Client
The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) is responsible for the protection and improvement of the Scottish environment and is home to a large archive of historically important environmental data which stretches back over 100 years.
The Problem
SEPA required charts from the river Irvine to be digitised so that all members of staff, throughout the agency, could access river level figures from any office without the need to locate and find the original hard copy charts.
What We Did
The project involved the digitisation and capture of data from historical hydrometric charts dating from 1913 – 1981. The charts had been used to continually record the level of the river Irvine.
A continuous dataset of this type and length is almost unique in the UK. The charts varied in size from A3 to A2 and the data was captured using digitising boards and the use of specialised Kisters digit Software.
The Benefits
- Digitisation of the charts provides SEPA with immediate access to historical data
- Captured data can now be used to calculate averages, floods and droughts over specified historical periods
- Time taken to complete these tasks has been reduced from weeks/months to minutes
- A permanent digital archive of historical records has been created
- Any document can easily be recovered in event of a disaster
- Documents can be accessed by multiple staff at the same time
- Improved future planning due to increased access to historical information