Environment GIS

Laois County Council plays a major role in environmental monitoring throughout the county.  This monitoring has been greatly facilitated through GIS technology, which allows the environmental data to be recorded and analysed spatially.  GIS has also enable better dissemination of this data throughout the organisation and to the public, especially through the Intranet and Internet GIS systems, LABINFO is a single-screen application that processes laboratory data and then makes it available to a wide audience in a new manner.  Each sample is carefully tracked to ensure all required tests are carried out and duly recorded.  LabInfo produces mandatory reporting and provides administration and security features. Users can quickly choose their particular area of interest, e.g. 'Drinking Water Results' on 'Public Schemes'.  Where particular parameters exist in unacceptable concentrations, then both the associated sample and parameter results are highlighted in colour.  The LGCSB are currently developing a GIS interface for this software using Geomedia objects.

ONLINE WATER QUALITY (navigate to Local Government - Surface Water Quality) is an Internet application developed by Laois County Council and accessible from Laois.ie. This application provides the public with near real time water quality data for the whole of County Laois. This is in direct accordance with the guidelines set out in the European Water Framework Directive. The application was developed using Geomedia technology and extracts the environmental data directly from the LabInfo SQl database. This application is hosted by the LGCSB.

 NATIONAL LITTER POLLUTION MONITORING SYSTEM was developed by the Department of the Government Heritage and Local Government (DoEHLG) and is one of the earliest GIS applications implemented within Laois County Council.  This application assists and monitors the progress of the Local Authorities in the discharge of their duties under the Litter Pollution Act 1997 with the aim of reducing and then eliminating incidences of litter pollution.  The position of every potential Litter Generator is identified and logged on Litter GIS maps.  Once completed these once-off Litter Generator maps are used to identify significant 'Hotspots' of pollution risk and random survey areas.

The Litter Monitoring GIS has several primary functions: 

• Allows the entry of objects to represent litter generators
• Generate various reports types on litter generators
• Allows the input of details associated with each Litter GIS object
• The facility to attach/detach OS maps
• The ability to perform a Gazetteer search
• The ability to generate high risk and random litter survey areas
• The ability to rank each DED according to litter risk
• The ability to perform thematic shading on the generator type weighting and distance