Galway County Council has received national recognition for an innovative digital project that mapped over 40,000 graveyard memorial records across County Galway and made them publicly available online.

The ‘Digitising Galway’s Graveyard Heritage’ project was last night (Thursday) named overall winner of the ‘Community Engagement’ category of Esri Ireland’s annual ‘Customer Success Awards’ held in Dublin.

Working with and supported by Galway Rural Development, Forum Connemara, The Heritage Council, The National Monuments Service and Galway County Community Archaeology Service, Galway County Council provided funding to local groups to employ experts to train local communities to use mobile technology and to undertake drone mapping of graveyards resulting in a public release of 40,000 records from across the county via the Local Authority’s Open Data Portal.

This is the second national award to be picked up by the project after it was named winner at the Public Sector Digital Transformation Awards last October.

Outlining the background to the project, Barry Doyle, Geographic Information System (GIS) project lead for Galway County Council said, “We have been working with various community groups and organisations to collect and collating valuable data relating to those who are buried in various graveyards for several years.”

“Galway County Council, with funding from the Heritage Council, the Open Data Engagement Fund and its own resources developed and made available a mobile app specifically for use by surveyors at the local level for memorial surveys, along with associated data management and validation processes,” he added.

“This technology, along with drone technology, was made available to local community groups to expand the number of graveyards in the project resulting in the 40,000 records that are now publicly available.”

The Galway County Digital Mapping of Graveyards Project may be viewed at galwaycoco.maps.arcgis.com and data.gov.ie.

Pictured receiving the ‘Community Engagement’ award at Esri Ireland’s ‘Customer Success Awards’ are (from left) GIS Analyst Mackenzie Boland, IS Project Leader Barry Doyle, GIS Analyst / Developer Anthonin Lize, and GIS Technician Bridin Feeney of Galway County Council.