The Province of Noord-Brabant

The Province of Noord-Brabant forms the administrative layer between the government and the Noord-Brabant municipalities. The province has specific powers and responsibilities for the supervision of spatial planning, environmental protection and nature sites and activities. Geodata plays an important role at the Province of Noord-Brabant. The province has its own geo-department that solves GIS problems for all the different groups in the organization. 

The need

The Netherlands produces the largest amount of nitrogen per hectare in Europe. This has negative consequences for the nature. The province and the government are working on a new approach to nitrogen by imposing measures that ensure a downward trend in nitrogen deposition in protected nature areas. 

The area-oriented approach is central to nitrogen initiatives. Natura 2000 is a European network of protected nature areas. Noord-Brabant has 21 Natura 2000 areas, 14 of which are nitrogen-sensitive. In order to provide space for development in Noord-Brabant, the deposition of nitrogen in the natural areas must be significantly reduced. To enable the area-based approach for each Natura 2000 area, geographical data has been collected and needs to be integrated and presented. 

The solution

A team from the Province of North Brabant and Tensing is jointly working on nitrogen mapping.

All relevant, available information is collected and uploaded in ArcGIS. The data is prepared in FME workspaces or uploaded directly into ArcGIS Online, depending on the file type or pre-processing required. Afterwards, the collected data is presented in a story map that provides an overview of all Natura 2000 sites and all available nitrogen-related information.

During the project, we created several GIS applications and maps to answer individual questions. To collect all this information, ArcGIS Hub was set up. An Esri product that enables a connection between partners and residents and ensures cooperation, coordination and integration of different projects.

The result

ArcGIS Hub provides the ability to collect all information on a website specifically for related data. The content in ArcGIS Online can be easily shared and edited. The story map with nitrogen-related information and the maps also allow non-GIS experts to interpret the information.