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Sbarc, Ffordd Maindy, Caerdydd, CF24 4HQ | Spark, Maindy Road, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ
www.keepwalestidy.cymru
leq@keepwalestidy.cymru
Joe Marshall-Mills
Swyddog System Gwybodaeth Ddaearyddol [GIS] a Data
GIS and Data Officer
Angharad James
Swyddog Polisi ac Ymchwil
Policy and Research Officer](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/wc25keepwalestidywebversion-251113161755-631428c5/75/Building-powerful-web-apps-to-improve-productivity-and-engagement-Esri-UK-Welsh-Conference-2025-20-2048.jpg)
![Going Geospatial
Sharing with the team
ArcGIS
Online
]
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Styling (based on lands use)
Problematic
Data
Spatial
Data](https://crownmelresort.com/image.slidesharecdn.com/wc25keepwalestidywebversion-251113161755-631428c5/75/Building-powerful-web-apps-to-improve-productivity-and-engagement-Esri-UK-Welsh-Conference-2025-12-2048.jpg)
![Cadwch Gymru’n Daclus yn gwmni wedi ei gyfyngu trwy warant. Rhif Cwmni: 4011164 Rhif Elusen: 1082058 Rhif TAW: 850 3958 13
Keep Wales Tidy is a Company Limited by Guarantee. Company Registration Number: 4011164 Charity Registration Number: 1082058 VAT Registration Number: 850 3958 13
Sbarc, Ffordd Maindy, Caerdydd, CF24 4HQ | Spark, Maindy Road, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ
www.keepwalestidy.cymru
leq@keepwalestidy.cymru
Joe Marshall-Mills
Swyddog System Gwybodaeth Ddaearyddol [GIS] a Data
GIS and Data Officer
Angharad James
Swyddog Polisi ac Ymchwil
Policy and Research Officer](https://crownmelresort.com/image.slidesharecdn.com/wc25keepwalestidywebversion-251113161755-631428c5/75/Building-powerful-web-apps-to-improve-productivity-and-engagement-Esri-UK-Welsh-Conference-2025-20-2048.jpg)
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Building powerful web apps to improve productivity and engagement - Esri UK Welsh Conference 2025
Discover the powerful impact that geospatial web apps can have on user productivity and stakeholder engagement in this session led by Keep Wales Tidy. The environmental charity will share how it has recently introduced a new, world-leading litter data collection methodology comprising apps built with ArcGIS Survey123, ArcGIS Experience Builder and ArcGIS Dashboards. Named GLÂN (Geospatial Litter Analysis), the new ArcGIS-driven approach has dramatically improved the productivity of surveyors, working in the field and at their desks, and also delivered much clearer and more visual information for monitoring cleanliness across Wales. Keep Wales Tidy will also describe how it is continuing to create ArcGIS web apps to share its survey results and help it engage effectively with communities, researchers, local authorities and policy-makers. Joining Keep Wales Tidy on stage, Esri UK’s technical presenters will pass on some tips for how to create engaging web apps that meet the needs of users. They will demonstrate the flexibility available when configuring an app, whether you require one page or multiple pages, and share some new ways for creating engaging, data-driven visuals in a scrollable interface.
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Building powerful web apps to improve productivity and engagement - Esri UK Welsh Conference 2025
- 1. Building powerful webapps to improve productivity and engagement Keep Wales Tidy ESRI UK WELSH CONFERENCE 2025
- 2. GLÂN| A United Frontfor Litter Data Monitoring across Wales Geospatial Litter ANalysis
- 3. Eradicate litter and waste Setstandards for environmental quality Create and restore green spaces Empower young people Independent charity to improve the environment in Wales, now and for the future
- 5. >30 million pieces oflitter across Wales
- 7. Policy and Research Researchand guidance for LEQ* issues Collaborative working Behaviour change and targeted prevention Litter and LEQ* surveys Evidence for policy and legislative development *LEQ – Local Environmental Quality
- 8. Plastic wet wipeban Deposit Return Scheme EPR* for Litter Visitor Levy Single-use vape ban Single-use plastics ban EPR* for Packaging Recycling Regulations *Extended Producer Responsibility
- 9. Historic LEAMS surveys(2007-2024) – Surveyed streets only Static reports – Focus for local authority cleansing teams Create a new methodology – Improve system and increase efficiency Emphasis on communication and collaboration – Work together for action Key principles of data – Fair, Useful, Robust, Transparent
- 10. Tackling the Problem Threekey issues: Problematic Data Spatial Data Siloed Surveying Smart Surveying Static Reporting Dynamic Visualisation
- 11. Going Geospatial Producing apotential site list ArcGIS Pro OS NGD documentation Select and filter Problematic Data Spatial Data Area/ line to point
- 12. Going Geospatial Sharing withthe team ArcGIS Online ] Sharing Styling (based on lands use) Problematic Data Spatial Data
- 13. Data Collection Creating acustom survey Siloed Surveying Smart Surveying ArcGIS Survey123 Connect pulldata calculations HTML design Reactive feedback
- 14. Data Collection Data inthe field Siloed Surveying Smart Surveying ArcGIS Field Maps Tools Custom URL
- 15.
- 16.
- 17. Visualisation Publishing the Results ArcGIS Experience Builder Static Reporting Dynamic Visualisation *Notrepresentative of final product or results
- 18. Independent resourcing thatcan be shared Increased efficiency and decreased human error Live and interactive visualisation of results Useful data that is actionable Process transferable across sectors
- 19. Strengthen and buildrelationships Communication and collaboration Live data Real time engagement and action Evidence-led policy and action Litter Free Wales Operational efficiency and targeted prevention 2025 2030 Analysis and visualisation of data
- 20. Cadwch Gymru’n Daclusyn gwmni wedi ei gyfyngu trwy warant. Rhif Cwmni: 4011164 Rhif Elusen: 1082058 Rhif TAW: 850 3958 13 Keep Wales Tidy is a Company Limited by Guarantee. Company Registration Number: 4011164 Charity Registration Number: 1082058 VAT Registration Number: 850 3958 13 Sbarc, Ffordd Maindy, Caerdydd, CF24 4HQ | Spark, Maindy Road, Cardiff, CF24 4HQ www.keepwalestidy.cymru leq@keepwalestidy.cymru Joe Marshall-Mills Swyddog System Gwybodaeth Ddaearyddol [GIS] a Data GIS and Data Officer Angharad James Swyddog Polisi ac Ymchwil Policy and Research Officer
Editor's Notes
- #1 First session of today, this is a joint session with speakers from both Keep Wales Tidy and Esri UK. Firstly are going to hear from Angharad and Joe about how they're using web apps to boost productivity and bring litter data to life, for collaborative work for a cleaner Wales. Followed by Esri UK technical colleagues Tom and Pheobe who will be sharing tips and demonstrating flexible techniques for building user-focused, visually engaging web apps. So firstly I'd like to welcome Angharad and Joe, thank you.
- #2 Angharad: Thank you, _____. *look at audience* Bore da a Croeso. Good morning and welcome. My name is Angharad, and I am one of the Policy and Research Officers in Keep Wales Tidy Joe: and I am Joe, the GIS and Data Officer. We are delighted to be presenting here today our new litter data monitoring methodology for Wales. You might have guessed already, but the new methodology is called Geospatial Litter Analysis, or GLÂN for short. We will be showing you how Esri products have supported its rapid development and how it will go on to drive meaningful environmental change through policy and preventative action. While we are still in its trial year, *slow down* GLÂN has already saved us about 66 days of staff time, while allowing us to survey 73% more locations when compared to our previous methodology – I am sure you’ll agree that that is pretty impressive. CLICK
- #3 Angharad: To give a bit of background about us before we get into the nitty gritty… Keep Wales Tidy is a small independent charity who are committed to improving the environment in Wales, now and for the future. We work through 4 main pillars, and we promote a holistic approach with an emphasis on behaviour change through community engagement, action & support. CLICK
- #4 Angharad: To work to these pillars, we carry out a magnitude of work across the country. We coordinate the Wales Coast Awards, Green Flag Award for Parks and the Eco-schools programme here in Wales, as well as running a LPfN programme. It is a massive team effort, not only with ourselves but with many other organisations and most importantly, our volunteers.. which might even include some of you here today! CLICK
- #5 Angharad: Back to GLÂN and why we needed a new methodology. Let’s return to the problem of litter, is it really that much of an issue? In 2024, we wrote to WG to declare a litter emergency, when our surveys showed a 286% increase in the number of streets that had an unacceptable level of cleanliness from the year before – which is pretty shocking. CLICK From our litter counts since Apr this year, we estimate a whopping 30 million plus pieces of litter across Wales (without considering remote/hard to access areas, fast roads, motorways or instances of fly-tipping). That is about 10 pieces of litter per person, which is rather significant considering only about half of us would admit to littering at some point in our lives. CLICK
- #6 Angharad: You might not think much about it, but the impacts of litter and other local environmental quality issues (such as graffiti, vandalism or dog fouling) are far reaching. CLICK It affects our wellbeing, our perceptions of safety, our culture – and it is frustrating to be surrounded by it everyday. CLICK It also damages our environment, our wildlife, our soils, rivers & oceans. Is this what we want? - We certainly don’t – so the question is: how do we tackle it and more importantly, how do we prevent it? CLICK
- #7 Angharad: My team carry out research and provide guidance on litter and local environmental quality issues - To do this work, we work with WG, LAs, social landlords, businesses and other large body landowners. We focus on behaviour change and targeted prevention – so how we as individuals, as well as leaders & policy makers, can make the right choices for the environment. We promote going beyond recycling – so repair, reuse and circular behaviours. CLICK A large portion of our work includes carrying out littersurveys across all 22 local authorities in Wales – and we use the data as evidence for policy and legislative development, as well as a demonstration of the impact of policy through time. CLICK
- #8 Angharad: There is an array of work being done at a legislative level to reduce or prevent litter. One example being that we supported the single use vape ban which came into effect in June by collecting data on this issue since 2022. Now, we continue to collect vape litter data to monitor the impact of the policy to answer questions like: Has vape litter decreased or were there any unintended consequences of the ban? CLICK Future examples include the long-awaited Deposit Return Scheme for drinks containers, and Extended Producer Responsibility for Litter, which holds producers responsible for cleansing litter on the ground, while incentivising less packaging or circular behaviours. The need to monitor litter through time becomes clearer here because if producers are paying, they will want the evidence to showcase: Where exactly is their money going? Does the scheme work or has litter decreased? It always comes back to evidence, where does it come from? CLICK
- #9 Angharad: We have carried out litter surveys across Wales since 2007 (with the historic LEAMS methodology), which has provided a large amount litter data as evidence for policy. CLICK However, we only surveyed hard surfaces (i.e. the street and the pavement) and we didn’t consider verges, parks or green spaces, beaches or transport hubs. *pause* Obviously, litter isn’t just found on streets – it travels through the environment! We weren’t only missing valuable data - we were also missing out on places where public perceptions are impacted more. For example, litter might have a greater impact on you at the beach or in a park than it would if you are walking down a street to a conference. CLICK LEAMS provided a snapshot in time with no immediately actionable information - Reports were only sent out after all surveys in each LA were complete. This is an issue because litter moves AND litter attracts more litter. CLICK The objective this year was to take our experience & the feedback we have gathered over the last few years and create an entirely new methodology – which has been no easy task. CLICK We needed to increase our efficiency as surveyors as well as improve the system to promote engagement, communication & collaboration. CLICK We needed to do this all while retaining our key data principles – Data has to be fair, robust, transparent and useful – so it can used to target resources and preventative action. CLICK
- #10 (09:30) Angharad: As you can see, we had a number of challenges which we have summarised into 3 key issues… Joe: Problem number 1 CLICK – The data we received about locations to survey was problematic at best, if received at all. It was in various formats, inconsistent, non-spatial and only contained streets. We needed to move to a singular source of definitive, geospatial data for our publicly accessible survey sites. Number 2 CLICK – Surveys undertaken were siloed. The platform that was being used had zero interoperability and would require manual downloads to be pulled into other programmes for it to be analysed. We needed to transition to better connected data and reduce human error within that data, where possible. Number 3 CLICK - Our reporting was periodic and static with greater potential of mistakes. We needed to increase the recency of our data, in a more interactive fashion to widen the scope of our engagement. *pause* *slow* Let’s explore each of these issues in detail and how Esri products supported the solution.
- #11 Joe: Instantly, we realised we needed access to Ordnance Survey data to tackle problem number 1, specifically the National Geographic Database (aka the NGD), which many of you will be familiar with. With a contractor Public Sector Geospatial Agreement signed, we were able to begin analysing relevant data (specifically, Sites, Paths and Streets) in the desktop application, ArcGIS Pro. CLICK With use of the documentation for the NGD, we were able to select and filter what we deemed as publicly accessible spaces for surveying. CLICK Additionally, we enhanced our dataset by adding attributes for internal use, such as key terms for land use based on the OS data. For example, any point within 5m of a commercial property would be classed as such. This aided with map symbolising in later stages. CLICK After a good amount of time spent reviewing and checking that the dataset suited our needs, we converted all polygons and lines into points to be used as guide locations for surveying. At this stage, we also utilised Lower Super Output Areas (or LSOAs) to count sites within these boundaries. This helped us with allocating workloads as well as giving us future analysis capabilities, as LSOAs are based on population and used as part of many other public sector datasets.
- #12 Joe: The second part to solving this issue was then sharing this dataset with the survey team. *pause* CLICK Here we leveraged AGOL, *pause* where we have the survey team set up as members in a custom group. This became extremely useful for reviewing the data in the previous slide and resharing new results. CLICK A joint effort was then made on the final iteration in regard to styling and setting up the maps that will be used when out surveying. We decided to make both online and offline versions of the map due to the potential rural locations that surveyors would be visiting. This being an example of Presteigne in mid Wales, with it’s associated sites to survey. With this new dataset, we had substantially improved our list of survey sites and any future capabilities for analysis. As Angharad has already mentioned, we are now surveying 73% more locations, while saving 66 days of surveyor’s time.
- #13 Joe: Onto issue number 2. *pause* The first step here was to overhaul the survey form itself. GLÂN already was vastly different to LEAMS in terms of the data collected but we also wanted to reduce the time spent manually adding repeat information, by automating as much as possible. Survey123 Connect is another desktop application which gave us increased freedom in creating the exact form we needed, both in terms of design and functionality. CLICK Multiple IF statements were implemented as well as pulldata calculations, to assist in automating the data collection process. Here we used EXIF data from the site image captured to geolocate the surveyor automatically. CLICK HTML design then helped us edit the look of the survey to make it easy to use as well as generate instant feedback to the surveyor. CLICK For instance, as litter is counted, the final score and grade is fed back to the user at the end of the page, changing colour according to score. We also used a select one question fixed at the top of the form to allow surveyors to navigate between groups of litter types.
- #14 Joe: Now we move into the field so let us talk about the use of mobile applications. *pause* CLICK We decided to use FieldMaps first rather than going straight to Survey123. This not only give surveyors the ability to filter data, but they can navigate to sites or use other tools such as measuring. CLICK Primarily, we chose this method due to the capability of adding URL parameters to a link within the pop-up. In this example, it is the site name we pull across into the form when moving from Field Maps to Survey123.
- #15 Joe: CLICK Now that we are pulled to Survey123 and that site name has been populated for us, surveyors take an image to locate themselves. This removes human error while data collection is uninterrupted. Other data is also being captured in the background and not visible on the form. This includes, the start time of the survey, the local authority and which LSOA the surveyor is in. CLICK Once that initial information has been captured, the surveyor then moves on to count litter items found. As the surveyor counts litter using spinners, the score and grade are given at the end of the page, allowing instant evaluation of what has been collected so far. CLICK The next page is for Adverse Environmental Quality Indicators, which are on a scale as opposed to a count. At certain levels, indicators may require more information, which can then be documented by the surveyor. This could be identifying the type of damage caused by vandalism or if bins were found on site. What’s great here is, by using both desktop and mobile applications, data is now richer and benefits from minimal human error when compared to the prior methodology. CLICK
- #16 Joe: Regarding the third problem, there are two main priorities. The first is to provide a visualisation tool that can be used internally for admin and operations. CLICK Using Dashboards, we rapidly put together (and continue to develop) a digital resource that we use to monitor the progress of surveys complete, as well as track key information and manage workloads by directly editing values in the app. Here you can see us fly between Cardiff and Flintshire and view the surveys that have been completed there.
- #17 Joe: The second part to this is that we want to provide the public with access to our survey results while considering our primary audience being landowners responsible for cleansing, so we can provide insightful data that can lead to action. We are trialing Experience Builder as a platform to show our data but this is a work in progress. CLICK We want to give a broad snapshot of an all-Wales picture which relies on extrapolated litter counts, as well as a more detailed view of the data that is driven by certain narratives or policies. Imagine a section on the Deposit Return Scheme that will analyse areas with high counts of cans and bottles, this can lead to better resource funding to reduce drinks litter. Additional benefits to this dashboard could be seeing details of the surveys themselves, such as the site image and direction of travel. *slow* So at last, we’re making a big step away from manual static reports and using the benefit of live interconnected data to bring the user more interactive and actionable results. Stay tuned for when this goes live!
- #18 Joe: As demonstrated, we have not only tackled our 3 priority issues but vastly enhanced the workflow of litter data collection and visualisation. It is important to realise the benefits that have come from this. We now independently resource ourselves by using Ordnance Survey data, made applicable to this methodology via processing it in ArcGIS Pro. Surveyor efficiency has not only has increased, due to less time at the desk, but less mistakes are now made due to increased automation in Survey123. The results of which, is interactable, live data that can be analysed to provide useful, actionable data to aid in the eradication of litter and waste. This is important for you, because the transformative process we have undertaken is transferable for other projects and sectors.
- #19 Joe: But what about the future… *pause* CLICK We want to begin by further strengthening and building new relationships with local authorities, landowners and others through engagement with this data. CLICK Our intention is to lobby for improved communication between departments and teams responsible for areas of land. This could be between local authorities and social landlords or between internal teams such as housing, transport or cleansing. CLICK By 2030, we will have a true All Wales picture, having completed surveys in all LSOAs in Wales, and as we move through this time period, we will work to improve the ways in which we analyse and dynamically visualise the data, the latter of which will be publicly available – CLICK highlighting its use for us, large body land owners or others to plan and prioritise cleansing and interventions, while improving operational efficiency within the bodies who are responsible for cleansing. CLICK The engagement with GLÂN has already begun, and there are already some great examples of how our data has created change and action. In one local authority, they plan to change their cleansing method to sweep smaller items of litter in their towns, due to a high density of cigarette butts identified during surveys. In another, our volunteers are cross checking our survey sites in their own communities to see what locations require rapid action, in other words, where they can litter pick next! CLICK What is important to highlight, is that Esri products are facilitating our ability to demonstrate the importance of evidence-led policy and action, to protect the environment here at home in Wales, and internationally. If we work and act together, we can achieve a Litter Free Wales by 2030 – a tidy Wales, that we all want to be part of.
- #20 Joe: Diolch yn fawr, thank you for listening!
- #21 Thank you Angharad Joe, Tom and Phoebe for that session. We can all benefit from the work of KWT and hopefully you will have seen something in that session that perhaps you can put into action.