Case Study: City of York Council achieves faster, cost-effective gully mapping and improved flood protection with Ordnance Survey

City of York Council - Customer Case Study

City of York Council, responsible for a 272 km2 area with over 200,000 residents, needed a quick, low‑cost way to map and manage its gully network to reduce flood risk. The council’s GIS team adopted an ESRI solution — using the Collector for ArcGIS app with ArcGIS Online and Ordnance Survey base mapping — to provide an easy-to-use mobile tool for staff with little or no GIS experience.

Using ESRI’s Collector for ArcGIS, gullies are captured via GPS or manual placement, annotated with dropdown attributes and photos, and published through ArcGIS Online so changes are immediately visible in ArcMap and web apps. In the first eight months four flood‑risk users recorded more than 5,000 entries, devices are now used by drainage operatives for maintenance and investigations, and the in‑house ESRI‑based approach delivered significant cost savings (the app is included with ArcGIS support so no extra payment was required).

City of York Council

Steve Wragg

Flood Risk Manager