OGA - Esri UK Annual Conference 2016

Editor's Notes

1. Thank you Shaz for the intro. Welcome everyone and thank you for choosing the ‘Share It’ track. I’m going to spend 20 mins talking to you about the Oil and Gas Authority and our spatial data, hopefully the presentation title will make sense as we go on.
2. I don’t think I can talk about the Oil and Gas industry without showing this graph first. It clearly highlights the huge drop in the oil price over the last 24 months. This has had a significant effect on the Oil and Gas Industry in the UK, the number of job losses is well documented and in real terms this is lowest the oil price has ever been. The reality for Oil & Gas operators is that there product has quartered in price in a very short space of time. So things are difficult in an Industry that adds huge value to the UK plc as the facts and figures show. Ironically I started this job in January 2014, but I don’t think its all my fault?
3. So after that little intro to the Oil and Gas Industry and before we get stuck into the ESRI/GIS bit I better explain who the Oil and Gas Authority are and what we do. The OGA was formed from a small group within the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). This was as a result of a review carried out by Sir Ian Wood at the request of David Cameron during the coalition government. This review, know as the Wood Review, found that the government and industry would be better served with a new Regulator with a wider remit not just to regulate, but to influence and promote the UK Oil and Gas Industry. This is strategy is referred to as MER (Maximising Economy Recovery). Which in broad terms means gaining the maximum benefit for UK plc, creating jobs, building skills we can export as well getting resources out of the ground. Currently we are an executive agency of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC). The Energy Bill, which gained royal assent last week, sets the framework for the OGA to become an Independent Authority in the form of a Government Company later in the summer.
4. So that is our general remit, but who do we provide spatial data to. Unlike most we provide to a huge variety of customers with needs that are almost polar opposites. This is just a taste of the organisations that have used or downloaded our services. Everything from the obvious Oil companies using technical spatial data, environmental groups assess impact of activities, Local governments creating mineral plans or planning applications and academia. The activities of the Oil and Gas industry have a impact on wide group of interested parties.
5. So back in 2014 when I started what did we provided these customers and our internal customers at OGA. Well like most did and many cases still do our primary function was to produce paper/pdf maps. This was a support role/function something that was not considered integral to business, but certainly useful. To make these maps there was a need for lots of shapefiles, which were manually updated by the ‘Map Guy’. To produce these people would throw spreadsheets, DBs and literately scraps of paper (here make me a map). All this meant when it was difficult for the map guy to keep datasets accurate as we weren’t on the critical path of a lot of the data and a lot of manually intervention was needed. While there was nothing wrong with this approach for map making it just didn’t provide us with a foundation for making data the primary function and maps the by-product. So the rest of my presentation is going to show how quickly you can go from this starting point to something much more useful to your customers.
6. The first step was to build a workflow at high level and it looks like this. Called this an Audit or Product Based Planning for those familiar with PRINCE2. We asked ourselves the questions: What have we got? What products do we need to create? Then What do we need to create those products. The answer to that was we had lots of authoritative sources, we needed it in multiple spatial formats to make maps, downloads, kml, etc. Then we needed those to populate our webpages, Interactive maps and our PDF maps. This gave us a number of benefits including…… So I said this was a high level simple diagram. Lets look at the actual model.
7. This is all nice, but its all about the impact and this is a great example was our Onshore Interactive Map. We issue licences to Oil and Gas Operators for the exclusivity to search for Oil and Gas. I will avoid using the word fracking too much, but that was the public perception of the 14th licencing round. As a result there was a lot of public interest in this round and the first question is always ‘Where?’. For previous rounds we’d produced a national scale pdf/paper map. This time we did an interactive map with the details of the successful companies, complete with the ability to search for your postcode, town, city, county. We made a press release on the 17th December 2015 and the link was included on the gov.uk website (lol), over 5000 hits in two days from around an average of 30 per day. It calm down a bit after that to 200 a day, until a social media campaign picked it up then 10,000 hits in the few working days before Christmas. A little bit of a lull over Christmas holidays and finally Manchester Evening News lead with a story that included a link to the map. Fantastic example of people using our product and a really powerful graphic to put in front of senior managers.
8. The onshore interactive map isn’t the only example of GIS being of significant to our organisation. Other examples have added weight to the need for GIS to be integral to our business processes. These quotes from high level documents show that our senior management are aware of what GIS can provide. This has allowed me to invest in our GIS infrastructure..
9. ….and this is what we have now. Everything links back to our corporate database (Energy Portal) giving all our users a single source of the truth. We have data editors internal and external to OGA as well as those just viewing the data. Externally - Even into some very bespoke Oil and Gas Industry software, such as Petrel, utilising the OGC services available in the ArcGIS servers. Internally – The number users has increased from a couple to 20.
10. Internally we have been rolling out ArcGIS Portal alongside the traditional desktop solutions. There will always be a place for Desktop, but it is a complex piece of software and requires formal training and pretty regular use. Portal allows you to simplify the GIS experience. We’ve been able to design bespoke apps for specific purposes with only a few buttons. This simplicity has opened up GIS to a whole new audience at the OGA…..
11. So who are these brave souls using GIS in some cases for the first time? Geologists – Obvious one, but these guys are using GIS daily. A combination of Desktop and Portal. Legal Team – Less obvious, but particularly relevant when visualising the impact of what they write. This has been particularly relevant when defining what is on onshore/offshore. Try explaining to a Lawyer that the territorial sea is different everyday. A web map helped with that. Policy – There is a drive to have spatial considered in all policy decisions. This was highlight last summer with the Infrastructure Act analysis the impact of where to ban fracking. I produced a large number of statistics and maps to articulate the impact on there policy decisions. Comms – We’ve used twitter, fb, linkedIn, sub space transmissions, but if a picture speaks a thousand words now many does an interactive map speak? Economists – Show me the money, looking at the fiscal impact. Directors – High level overview maps and apps, so they can see the current situation and make informed decisions
12. I like to finish on this appropriate quote because I think it highlights the direction of travel for GIS. Its about what the user wants, I’ll just manage their expectations!
13. Thank you for listening and I’ll happily take some questions if we have time or feel free to drop me a line or come have a chat during the rest of the day.
14. Name Crossrail / Bentley Brief History
15. Crossrail is the largest civil engineering project in Europe at the moment: 8 new sub-surface, £14.8bn funding envelope 90km surface network upgraded It will increase London’s rail capacity by10%,
16. Complexity – Engineering / tunnels 40m below urban landscape Complexity – Contractual / Transport for London – 120 contracts? Complexity – engineering design, assets, utilities, property, monitoring and traffic
17. Federated Server / Portal Accessibility Apps Mobility Public Access Near You Open Data Portal
18. Federated Server / Portal Accessibility Apps Mobility Public Access Near You Open Data Portal
19. Federated Server / Portal Accessibility Apps Mobility Public Access Near You Open Data Portal
20. Parliamentary commitment to share information Developed with web hosting partner
21. Parliamentary commitment to share information Developed with web hosting partner
22. Parliamentary commitment to share information Developed with web hosting partner
23. London Survey Grid Embedded as well known projection Part of core product from 10.4.1 Enables sharing of LSG data sources Custom Widgets Dynamic App Content Ground Settlement Reporting
24. Custom Widgets Dynamic App Content
25. New Data Linear Referencing / Schematics 3D / Spaces New Functionality Rail ‘Streetview’ Verification Assurance Handover Provision for London Underground Integration with Rail for London
26. New Data Linear Referencing / Schematics 3D / Spaces New Functionality Rail ‘Streetview’ Verification Assurance Handover Provision for London Underground Integration with Rail for London
27. New Data Linear Referencing / Schematics 3D / Spaces New Functionality Rail ‘Streetview’ Verification Assurance Handover Provision for London Underground Integration with Rail for London
28. New Data Linear Referencing / Schematics 3D / Spaces New Functionality Rail ‘Streetview’ Verification Assurance Handover Provision for London Underground Integration with Rail for London
29. New Functionality Rail ‘Streetview’ Verification Assurance Handover Provision for London Underground Integration with Rail for London