Part 1: How the RNLI is using geomatics to save lives

Land Journal: Most people are aware of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI). But could you give a bit of background about its history and structure?

Matthew Wright: The RNLI was formed more than 200 years ago in 1824, and funded entirely by voluntary donations, to provide search and rescue (SAR) cover across the seas around Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands.

Over the years, lifeboats have come on considerably from crewed rowing boats to the powered fleet we now have today, including hovercrafts. Since 1824, our volunteers have launched our lifeboats 398,587 times and saved more than 146,000 lives at sea.

The charity currently has more than 5,500 operational volunteer crew that operate lifeboats from 238 lifeboat stations, alongside a seasonal lifeguard service on around 253 beaches. 

LJ: The RNLI has been using marine charts for almost 200 years. When did it start to use digital spatial data and geographic information systems (GIS), and has their use changed in recent years?

MW: All our boats carry digital and paper charts. We collect the information on every call-out, including location, the type of incident and other details such as who was on the crew, what time of day it was and what the weather was like.

Geospatial capabilities have been available in the RNLI since 2014, starting with simple analysis and map making. Since then, we have implemented an enterprise solution opening up access to data and apps. 

One of our main apps, the Lifesaving Service Status app, was developed after our central operations team tasked the analytics, GIS and data science team to provide a real-time app. They wanted to know where our lifeboat fleet is at any one time, what is available to launch, which stations are on service, which stations aren't and why. We linked our core enterprise resource planning (ERP) database with a cloud-based GIS web-mapping application to achieve this, creating a live webmap enhanced with the automatic identification system (AIS) positional data from our fleet.

The app helps visualise the lifeboat service status data enabling it to be analysed effectively so we can start to see trends in terms of incident types, times and areas, and identify risk hotspots. For example, the fishing industry may wane in one area and tourism may take over, bringing different types of people in and creating different types of risk. The app allows us to look at the bigger picture and be forward-looking.

The app was originally built for an operations room with a large, wall-mounted screen where a small team works day and night. Now we've got more than 200 people using it on their mobiles, laptops and desktops. The data is telling an accurate story: every five minutes, we're seeing exactly where our boats are and what is happening around the coast. We use that data to make sure we've got the right boats and the right watercraft in the right place.

LJ: How does this differ from when things were paper-based?

MW: Stations would communicate with their neighbouring or flank stations and local management, but at a national level, we had no overview. Now we have a holistic view that we can share with everyone at a local level as well.

For example, we can now see the impact if neighbouring lifeboats are hauled out of the water for maintenance at the same time. We can better understand what support is available should a large incident occur and plan any response accordingly.

As more data goes into this map, it has helped to drive the way lifeboat operations are managed by providing an accurate real-time view of the whole lifeboat fleet in one place. It's great to see how the GIS map is changing the way people are working. The app has won a few awards including the UK IT industry award. 

This app has helped raise the profile and importance of geospatial. Since 2021, the RNLI has increased its use across the organisation, with six of the seven main departments now using geospatial tools or data in their daily tasks. A range of different apps help people make key decisions, covering topics such as water safety, legacy planning, estates, demographics and lifeguarding.

LJ: Where would you like to go next with the app?

MW: When lifeboats go out on a service call and return to base, volunteers in the station record all the service information manually into the front end of our lifesaving activity reporting database. This will include information from the crews and from those rescued if available.

But as we move towards gathering digital information for boat service calls, including tracking boats, weather, tides and currents, we can move closer to automatically storing service data and reduce the time volunteers spend inputting information manually.

We envisage that when a boat returns to the station the amount of information that needs recording will be reduced as we can complete much of the service record automatically. We can then use this data to inform questions such as, Was it a safe launch? Was the weather within tolerance for that class of boat? Which crew did we have onboard? Is there any trauma risk management (TRiM) support needed for particularly difficult or dangerous shouts?

As we start analysing the data we can also become more proactive and predictive. For example, we can monitor crew hours at sea from a welfare perspective to ensure that they remain fit and well.

We are working on a new version of the Lifesaving Service Status app. If we have an asset that is off service, the app helps us determine what the impact on the service will be. And based on historic launch data, incident types, marine traffic and weather conditions, it helps us prioritise the support on offer to get those assets back on service.

LJ: What more could be done with the data?

MW: Our aim is to gather more accurate information to inform our processes and management. Climate change is obviously on everyone's agenda, including ours, in terms of its impact on coasts, water users and our station operations.

With this in mind, another area we are looking at is digitally recording information from our lifeguarded beaches. In England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, our seasonal lifeguard teams on the beaches are manually recording vistor numbers every two hours, as well as any incidents, how many people are in the water and any environmental hazards such as rip currents. We're piloting automated processes using AI and machine learning to do the counting and number crunching, and even to analyse and alert us to rip currents.

The manual digitisation of paper-based lifeguard forms, traditionally done at the end of the season, could therefore become a rapid data cleansing process rather than a laborious data entry job. 

Automation will also support safety campaigns to ensure each beach has the correct signage. It could help us better understand which beaches are at higher or lower risk, and whether risk levels are changing. 

We believe in making as much of our data as possible open, including key datasets such as the location of our lifeboat stations, lifeguard units and return of service (launches). Users can download the data for analysis or link to it in their own systems. All the datasets can be viewed in the RNLI geospatial hub, which can be accessed from the Explore data page.

We have also developed apps that allow the public to track specific boats as part of the launch a memory scheme, including the relief lifeboat Eric's legend and Exmouth Shannon.

The Eric's legend app was a finalist at the Third Sector Awards.

LJ: Do you work with the UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO)?

MW: We've been using UKHO charts on all our vessels for years as well as onboard digital mapping systems, and we use the same admiralty charting map products in the application to record incidents by the lifeboat crew.

We are looking to use UKHO bathymetry mapping to provide depth information, the navigation channels and how the navigation routes are changing and for incident analysis. The UKHO is starting to release more application programming interfaces (APIs) such as tidal meters, which we are starting to implement, including to support our incident recording. There's a lot of data out there, and we're excited to be working towards making the best use of what's available.

LJ: Do you partner with any other bodies?

MW: Our responses mostly come through taskings from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), with whom we have a close working relationship. We are one of the SAR assets that the coastguard and other emergency services have at their disposal when anyone rings 999 or 112.

We are constantly exploring and testing solutions that will allow us to share data and information seamlessly between our systems so that we are both looking at a common operational picture. This benefits the MCA when those split-second decisions to launch are being made: they know exactly where our boats are and their service status, which flank stations are open and which assets can be used. 

One of our busiest stretches of water is the river Thames, which hosts four of our stations. A data sharing collaboration with the Port of London Authority has been established that allows us to pull datasets into one location so that our crew can quickly understand the daily risks along the river.

LJ: Where do you go from here?

MW: We recognise the power of GIS and data, but also appreciate that data must be reliable and therefore high quality. 

The RNLI is now making evidence-based decisions using our team's apps, and geospatial analysis has played a key part in the our 2040 strategy. Operational staff can rely on it because it's authoritative, it's live and becoming more reactive – we’re reaching a point where we know what's happening in real time, and we can start to predict what might happen. 

Our predictive modelling and analysis is evaluating whether we have the right boats at the right stations and whether a given station is suitably located; we're not simply saying that a map indicates where boats are needed. The many factors that influence the decision-making process make it imperative that our data is the best it can be. 

Our goal is to give all our staff access to an interactive map of all the RNLI spatial data. You could then filter, say, 'rescues of surfboarders in west Cornwall', make a map of this quickly and stick it in a report. You wouldn't need to worry about the data because it's all authoritative, from one source and totally reliable.

A version of this article was originally published in March 2021 and has now been updated.