Welcome to the first edition of the waste tracking newsletter
Keeping you up to date with what is happening with smart waste tracking
About the project
The UK waste tracking project is a partnership between the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA), Scottish Government, Welsh Government, the Environment Agency (EA), Natural Resources Wales (NRW), the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA).
The project looks at how we could use technology to establish the effective tracking of all waste through a single digital government service. The purpose of this work is to improve the quality and accuracy of waste data, and to make it more accessible and useable by businesses, regulators and government.
Waste tracking is part-funded by the GovTech Catalyst programme, run by Government Digital Service with support from Innovate UK, which aims to help technology companies deliver innovative solutions to public sector challenges.
In Phase 1 five companies were funded a total of £400,000 to build proof of concepts and now in Phase 2 two companies, Anthesis and Topolytics, are being funded up to £500,000 each, to develop and field test a prototype waste tracking service.
Phase 2 started in November 2019 and will last for 12 months.
News from Anthesis
Anthesis is developing an end to end solution for waste tracking named Vastum.
The first draft of the Vastum Data Standard has been developed. The Standard sets out the data fields that the system will collect and the format of each field and Anthesis will be speaking to stakeholders to understand the size of the gaps between the information businesses collect electronically at present and those required in the data standard. The Standard is an open data standard, created to comply with OpenAPI 3.0, and will be revised and updated as the project progresses.
On the development side, the high level infrastructure for the system has been set up and the database structure created (with reference to the data standard). Import/export APIs have been built and creating the user interfaces for sites and entities, management and registration are the current focus.
Anthesis has also been meeting their stakeholders, learning more about how their businesses operate, the data they collect and testing some of the practical aspects of digital waste tracking.
News from Topolytics
During the first quarter Topolytics is developing an initial ‘end-to-end’ version of the Topolytics waste tracking system. This has involved creating new components of the system that ingest and report on the data, built on the Topolytics WasteMap® platform.
Time and resources have also been invested in developing an "open" waste movement data format. This format is a fundamental piece of the system as it describes the movement of waste and the many scenarios that can occur. The format will keep the cost to the waste industry of integrating with a waste tracking system to a minimum, while accommodating new machine-to-machine technologies and future thinking.
To inform the development of the end-to-end system, Topolytics has involved stakeholders in testing initial prototypes, for example, interaction with the part of the system where the waste industry will submit data as transactions happen, on a regular basis and via automatic transfer from waste management software. Individuals from the waste industry, waste brokers and the UK environment agencies have helped to test the initial user journeys through this component. Their feedback is informing the next, improved version and also the approach to the reporting and analysis part of the system.
User panel activities
We invited businesses to join our virtual user panel to help us with on-going research into user needs, and usability testing of software as it is developed. There has been an excellent response with more than 550 businesses and organisations of all sizes signing up from across the UK.
Our first request for help in understanding user needs was an online survey to collect information on how panel members keep records of their waste movements and the IT systems some use to help them do so. This was sent out in November 2019 and received a very high response rate. We would like to thank everyone on the panel who took the time to respond.
A second survey will be issued in January 2020. In subsequent weeks, we are likely to be issuing invitations to panel members to participate in more interactive research activities.
Anyone new wishing to join the panel can do so here.
