What's happening up-river?

Everything starts with data. It can be difficult to visualise location data (represented as points, lines, and polygons) alongside regular data fields without a GIS system. By visualising your data on a map, you can easily begin to understand and analyse real-world events like consented discharges. Using the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, the foremost collection of curated location data, we can quickly add in all consented discharges across England already symbolised by discharge type from The Rivers Trust.

The Map Viewer in ArcGIS Online allows you to explore data. The Rivers Trust has included a river catchment attribute for each consented discharge. River management involves a partnership approach that considers the entire river catchment. Focusing on the River Aire in Leeds, we can see that it is part of a wider catchment with the River Calder that runs into the Aire at Castleford. Using the Filter tool, we can quickly filter the data to show only the consented discharges for a single catchment area by selecting "CaBA Catchment" contains "Aire".

ArcGIS Online also provides a wealth of analytical tools. Using the Create Watersheds tool we can identify the local catchment area and begin to understand what is affecting the River Aire. All that's required is to choose a location and wait for the tool to finish running a complex analysis, where it considers the difference in elevation. Once that's completed, we can extract the consented discharges that only affect our local catchment in Leeds. Use the Find Existing Locations tool and select the points that are "completely within" the watershed for central Leeds.

Share your findings with ease on the same platform. ArcGIS Online helps you to quickly create a web app (with no coding required) by choosing from a suite of Configurable App templates! When you're ready, your app can be shared securely with team members, different departments, or even another collaborating organisation. ArcGIS Online is also the perfect platform to host public-facing apps and share your data nationally. Which app template will you choose?