Clare Scarborough

Clare joined Tensing in January 2025 as a Technical Specialist, and is an FME Certified Professional. With over 5 years of previous experience working in geospatial, Clare is confident handling large and complex datasets, and turning these into valuable geographic insights. Clare has a wealth of experience across both the FME and Esri (Enterprise & AGOL) platforms, often combining their capabilities to achieve the most efficient method of data integration and visualisation.

Why did you join Tensing?
I joined Tensing to develop my technical capabilities and work alongside a great team that are always pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved with FME & Esri. Tensing have a strong focus on knowledge sharing, engaging with the wider geospatial community and professional development, so it is a great environment to learn and grow. I’d describe myself as 50:50 FME-Esri, so Tensing aligns with my experience and where I’d like to develop my skills further.

What’s your background with Esri & FME?

I first started using ArcMap during my undergraduate degree in Geography, however my first real venture into Esri as a data analyst was during my first role as Geospatial Analyst visualising NHS data during Covid-19. In the pandemic was when we made the switch from MapInfo to Esri, I learnt to rapidly turn around web mapping applications in days as the decision making landscape was constantly changing, paper maps were probably out of date by the time they were complete! At the same time I started using FME, and naturally the two worked together well – FME doing the heavy data lifting, manipulation, and automation, leaving the visualisation to the Esri products in AGOL and Enterprise Portal. I’ve more recently become an FME Certified Professional and hope to continue to develop my skills in both areas.

To get the ball rolling, what are your top 3 FME transformers?

TestFilter: It’s satisfying to be able to reduce the number of transformers in a Workspace, and when you’ve got multiple streams of data that need processing slightly differently this can be a great transformer.

FeatureWriter: Its really useful to be able to write out data of a variety of formats mid workflow and then continue and/or wait until that’s complete before going on to the next processing step.

Junction: I’m a big fan of a tidy Workspace, tucking away tunnels, attaching annotations so you know what goes where, I find myself using a lot of these!

Do you have a stand-out Esri application or function?

I like time-enabled data in Esri, combined with something like a story map or dashboard that shows you an evolving picture over a set time period. As mentioned, I was an analyst during Covid-19, during which I visualised vaccination uptake modelling predictions week by week in 2020 and it really brought the data to life to decision makers in a way that spreadsheets just can’t!

What has been the most intriguing data-wrangling challenge you have encountered?

During my time in the NHS, I led a project where we had to analyse a closing GP Practice and use defensible methodologies to redistribute the patients to the surrounding practice(s).

I’d describe it as a data wrangling challenge in a number of ways: 1) getting accurate input data, 2) the decision making steps in FME, and 3) getting the outputs in the formats required to make it all happen. For input data, there were differing sources of lists of patients that needed matching, people leaving and joining the practice during the analysis, dealing with confidential data using anonymisation, ensuring family units stay together. For 2) we generated lists in FME and used Survey123 to send choice options out to patients as letters to their home, to ask if they had preferences of practice (such as near their family/workplace), tie this back to the data, incorporate capacity limits of surrounding practices to take on patients, check patients are inside practice catchment boundaries, add in manual data inputs from the local care board where people had telephoned in their choices.. the list goes on!

FME was absolutely crucial here from a documentation perspective, we could see every single patient’s journey from the initial list, through to the letter they were sent advising where they’d now be registered. For 3) FME can handle so many formats, all of this processing included SQL, Survey123/ feature layers, spreadsheets uploaded to letter mailing platforms that had to be password protected – any format we threw at FME it could deal with it all in a single workflow. Although all of this is a very personal, sensitive, and not an ideal scenario for anyone to have their practice closed, it was noted in the local news by a resident that it was well organised and handled!

When you aren’t working what do you enjoy?

I like to stay active with things like swimming and running, usually setting myself a ridiculous challenge that by the time the event comes around I have no choice but to train... which is why I completed the London Classics last year!