The document discusses the Environment Agency's use of an information management platform to deliver assurance of digital asset data through verification and validation. Key points: 1) The Environment Agency needed to improve how it received, assured, and stored digital asset information to meet new UK standards for infrastructure data management. 2) They used FME and 1Integrate tools to build a system where data is transformed and validated against rules during "receive" and "verify" phases before being uploaded to their asset management system. 3) A rules catalogue manages the structured rules and allows configuration of the assurance process to adapt to changing asset data requirements over time.

1. Delivering assurance through an
information management platform:
DRV SERVICE

2. Presenter
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Martyn Lufkin
Principal Consultant
1spatial (UK)

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The DRV Service Project - Agenda
1. Who are the Environment Agency?
2. What was the data problem?
3. How we used FME
4. What is a Rule Catalogue, and how we
used 1Integrate
5. What’s next?

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Introduction

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Who are the Environment Agency?
• Non-departmental Public Body, sponsored by DEFRA
• Responsible for protection and enhancement of the environment
across England
• Flood and Coastal Risk Management – Data is as important as the
assets!
• Mandated in 2016 to improve productivity in construction by
delivering BIM Assurance (BS/PAS 1192)
• Now internationally adopted as ISO 19650 – sets out standards for
effective information management of digital data

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The Information Management Mandate
Transforming Infrastructure Performance Roadmap to 2030
Annex B:
8. The client (shall)…
‘e) have a digital mechanism for defining
its information requirements and then
procuring, receiving, assuring, and
storing, via a system of record, the
information that it procures;’

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Environment Agency Information Journey

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Information Management Platform Guidance

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Delivery: exchanging information
• COBie
“Construction Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie) is a
non-proprietary data format for the publication of a subset of building
information models (BIM) focused on delivering asset data…”
• (geo)COBie
A complex file structure for asset management, extending the COBie
standard to include 3D geometrical data. The file has a fixed schema,
supplied in Excel format, and has been extended to include geometry stored
as coordinate line-strings in a geoJSON syntax.

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Delivery: geoCOBie
• Excel data format
• ‘Pivoted’ data structure
• Structured content
• Schema agnostic
• Open ‘format’
• Subset of IFC
• Associated files

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Assurance: Environment Agency Information

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Solution Design

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Tools for the Job

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What tools were suitable for this project?
● 1Integrate
1Integrate is a data assurance tool that uses a
rules-based approach. Data assurance is the
process of comparing data against a set of
rules to establish the level of conformance.
● FME
FME - data integration platform that allows
connecting and transforming data between
hundreds of systems, with the best support for
spatial data.

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Data Journey: assurance through verification and
validation

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Receive Phase
• Scheduling
• Looping
• Managing
cancelled jobs
• Automation
writer

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Receive Phase

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Verify Phase

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Verify Phase
● Stage Gates.
● Transaction management.
● Data Connectivity
○ Asite API connectivity
○ Connectors to rule engine: 1Integrate.

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Verify Phase
● Modularisation
● Custom Transformers
● Workspaces (Job
submitters)
● Best Practice
● Collaborative Working

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1Integrate rules engine
● Structured Rule
● Content Management
● UI driven rule building
● Codeless rule writing

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“If all the data analysts in the world were
laid head to toe, they wouldn't be able to
reach the same conclusion”
Anon (modified slightly by Martyn Lufkin)
Principal Consultant, 1Spatial

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Assurance: Rules Catalogue
● Structured rules
● Engagement tool
● Versioned/revision
based rulesets
● Sharable
● Configuration for
assurance process

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Assurance: Configuration Driven Rules
Data Requirements Library (DRL)
“The Data Requirements Library
documents the terminology and
categories used to classify and describe
Environment Agency (EA) assets. It also
documents the specific data attributes
that are used to describe the properties of
each Asset Type and its Element Types.”
● API Integration
● Revision based, rule life cycle
● Evolving data

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Reporting
● Automated assurance
results
● Granular reporting
● Configuration driven
● Upload to Asite/CDE
workflow
● Subject matter
validation

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What’s next?

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Moving Forward…
● Increasing the rule catalogue.
● Expanding the scope of the DRV service into other business
areas.
● New formats? potentially IFC, PDF reading.
● FME:23
● Deployment parameters
● Team Collaboration – using Workspace Compare Tool/Versioning

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Resources
1Spatial:
• A road to smarter asset information assurance on-demand webinar.
• Environment Agency asset information assurance case study.
https://1spatial.com/news-events/on-demand-webinar/the-road-to-smarter-a
sset-information-assurance/
• Data Foundations.
https://1spatial.com/products/capabilities/data-foundations/
Government and Industry Interoperability Group:
• Step-by-step guidance on implementing an information management
platform.
• Contract clauses to support the procurement of interoperable information.
• Glossary – to increase understanding and drive consistency.
• A case study of the Environment Agency’s modular technology approach.

29. ThankYou!
Martyn.Lufkin@1spatial.com