Building a Waterway Management System for Canal and River Trust
- A ‘mission critical’ Waterway Management System for managing incidents, closures, and maintenance schedules across a 2,000-mile network of canals and rivers.
- Rationalisation of disparate data sets from multiple systems to provide near real-time updates
- Visualising and managing complex geospatial data sets through an intuitive mobile first UI
Canal and River Trust, responsible for managing the UK’s 2,000-mile network of canals and rivers, faced several challenges with their existing Waterway Management System. The platform, developed internally over the years, was outdated and inefficient for managing both planned and unplanned waterway issues.
The Trust needed a modern and scalable system that would allow them to efficiently record and manage, and notify waterway users about incidents, ranging from blocked waterways to damaged locks and ensure this information was available across multiple channels, including their website, email, and social media platforms to alert leisure and commercial users of the waterways. With a focus on improving the accuracy of information, the team at Canal and Rivers Trust wanted a solution that would provide near real-time incident updates, support decision-making, and be easy to use for their team in the field.
The ambition was clear, to develop a mobile-first administration portal that could make sense of complex geospatial data, reduce human error, and ensure faster communication with customers. The Trust is constantly striving to increase customer satisfaction ratings and this project forms part of an ongoing strategic programme of work.
What we did
Requirement Gathering and Initial Planning
We began by working closely with the internal team at Canal and River Trust to understand their existing processes, pain points, and goals. A key focus was simplifying the way they tracked and notified stakeholders about incidents, particularly in the case of unplanned waterway blockages.
The Trust’s previous system required multiple parties to understand complex data and manage the input of incidents leading to delays, errors, and inefficiencies.
Designing a Mobile-First, User-Friendly Administration Portal
The Canal and River Trust team often work in the field, we designed a mobile-first portal that could be easily used on both mobile devices and desktops.
The goal was to ensure ease of use, even in low-data environments. We focused on providing an intuitive user interface that enabled staff to quickly navigate complex data to update, and manage incidents directly from the field, ensuring faster response times.
Integrating Geospatial Data for Real-Time Incident Management
The Enigma-designed portal was integrated with internal systems, including the Trust’s canal and asset geospatial data. This allowed members of the Canal and River Trust team to select specific assets, like locks or bridges, or sections of the canal network affected by an incident. The system pulls in relevant mapping data and displays which areas are impacted, ensuring that all stakeholders have a clear understanding of the situation.
This integration also enabled more accurate reporting and ensured that waterway users received relevant, location-based information about incidents and closures.
Streamlining Data Movement Between Systems
One of the key challenges with the old system was the limited ability to move, manage and visualise data from multiple systems and share this with end users via email or social media without manual curation. We built a solution that automatically pushed incident updates and notifications to external channels like the Trust’s website and social media accounts, allowing customers to receive updates through their preferred communication medium.
This process was designed to work in near real-time, ensuring that waterway users were kept informed of incidents as they developed.
Enabling Secure, Role-Based Access and Updates
Security was a key consideration for this project. We implemented secure user authentication, using the Trust’s centralised user management systems, to ensure that only authorised personnel could input or update incident data. This authentication system helps the Trust to manage their users safely and at scale, limiting access to sensitive information, while still allowing staff in the field to manage updates efficiently.
Results
Customer trust and satisfaction is a high priority for the Canal and River Trust team, and the improvements to the system are expected to significantly increase customer satisfaction scores and decrease disruption to the waterway systems, making route planning easier and more reliable. The ease of access and responsiveness to incidents is expected to improve the overall satisfaction of canal and river users across the UK’s vast network of waterways.
For staff, the new system simplifies the process of managing and updating incidents in real time, improving efficiency of the Trust and making it easier to plan and coordinate response efforts.
The Canal and River Trust has big ambitions and the development of this system forms Phase One of the strategic programme of activity. All future developments will be designed to further enhance the ease of experience of traveling by river or canal in the UK.
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