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Microsoft Public Sector United Kingdom

Natural England

Data Lake / Data Warehouse Modernization · IT Operations Automation

Mapping used to be a manual process, with teams walking the peatlands and plotting features. This was immensely time-consuming and precluded any kind of national mapping because of the sheer volume of work involved.

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As a result, a new peat strategy is an important part of Defra's 25-year environment plan. This includes funding for peatland restoration in England.
In 2021, a proposal was put forward to use AI to map damage to English peatlands as part of the UK Civil Service Data Challenge, an initiative to promote better use of data across government.
Only 22% of UK peatlands are in a near-natural condition. Degradation of the UK's peatlands risks not only losing these important ecosystems and their environmental benefits
The UK's peatlands cover 12% of the country, locking in an estimated 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon. As well as being an important carbon sink, when in a natural, healthy condition

Reported impact

Business outcome

The UK's peatlands cover 12% of the country, locking in an estimated 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon. As well as being an important carbon sink, when in a natural, healthy condition

  • Cost Reduction
  • Productivity Improvement
  • Risk Reduction
  • Scalability

Solution

Mapping used to be a manual process, with teams walking the peatlands and plotting features. This was immensely time-consuming and precluded any kind of national mapping because of the sheer volume of work involved. Natural England sought a solution to the time-consuming work of mapping damage to England's peatlands in order to focus restoration work. Working on Defra's Data Analytics and Science Hub (DASH) platform, built on Microsoft Azure and Azure Databricks, the team developed AI models to map damage to England's peat. New models and ways of working have been developed to map peatland damage and direct resources. Best practices and reusable resources can be shared across other projects and departments. What's more, as in all ecosystems, peatland plants take CO 2 from the atmosphere. However, unlike most other ecosystems, this CO isn't fully released as peatland plants decompose.

Data flow

Operational and business data is gathered from the customer's source systems processed in Azure Databricks.

Solution architecture

1 components · 1 layer
  1. Compute
    • Azure Databricks Processes and transforms large datasets for analytics, modeling, and downstream reporting.

Architecture clues

  • Azure Databricks: Processes and transforms large datasets for analytics, modeling, and downstream reporting.
  • Natural England sought a solution to the time-consuming work of mapping damage to England's peatlands in order to focus restoration work.
  • New models and ways of working have been developed to map peatland damage and direct resources. Best practices and reusable resources can be shared across other projects and depart...
  • The UK's peatlands cover 12% of the country, locking in an estimated 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon. As well as being an important carbon sink, when in a natural, healthy condition
  • What's more, as in all ecosystems, peatland plants take CO 2 from the atmosphere. However, unlike most other ecosystems, this CO isn't fully released as peatland plants decompose.
  • Working on Defra's Data Analytics and Science Hub (DASH) platform, built on Microsoft Azure and Azure Databricks, the team developed AI models to map damage to England's peat.

Evidence from the source

Mapping used to be a manual process, with teams walking the peatlands and plotting features. This was immensely time-consuming and precluded any kind of national mapping because of the sheer volume of work involved.
Natural England sought a solution to the time-consuming work of mapping damage to England's peatlands in order to focus restoration work.
The UK's peatlands cover 12% of the country, locking in an estimated 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon. As well as being an important carbon sink, when in a natural, healthy condition
What's more, as in all ecosystems, peatland plants take CO 2 from the atmosphere. However, unlike most other ecosystems, this CO isn't fully released as peatland plants decompose.
Working on Defra's Data Analytics and Science Hub (DASH) platform, built on Microsoft Azure and Azure Databricks, the team developed AI models to map damage to England's peat.
Transparency Evidence & methodology 85/100 reference value · 89% confidence · 1 source

Review how this reference was scored and trace each normalized claim back to its documented source.

01

Scoring methodology

How scores are calculated

Customer Reference Value measures usefulness as a customer reference. Evidence Confidence measures the quality and traceability of available evidence, not independent verification.

Customer reference value85/100
  • Problem clarity20/20
    Measures whether the customer's operational problem is specific enough to compare.
  • Implementation depth20/25
    Rewards named components, data flow, integrations, and architecture detail.
  • Outcome specificity20/20
    Measures whether the reported benefit is concrete rather than a generic claim.
  • Quantified impact25/25
    2 metrics describe measurable impact.
  • Deployment scale0/10
    Rewards evidence of a live or scaled deployment and meaningful integration scope.
Evidence confidence89%
  • Source authority20/25
    The main evidence is an official vendor-published customer story.
  • Claim traceability21/25
    10 of 12 key fields link to a named source.
  • Direct evidence20/20
    5 direct source quotes retained.
  • Date provenance10/10
    The publication date comes from the source page or publisher.
  • Source transparency8/10
    1 source reference document publisher, URL, authority, retrieval, and supported fields.
  • Implementation specificity10/10
    Rewards source-backed components, data flow, quantified impact, and a specific outcome.
02

Traceability

Sources & provenance

Field coverage shows which facts each source supports. Dates are shown only when documented by the source.

  1. Microsoft

    Natural England customer story

    First-party
    https://www.microsoft.com/en/customers/story/18968-natural-england-azure
    Source type
    Vendor-published customer story
    Published
    Jul 10, 2024
    Supports
    • Customer
    • Business problem
    • Solution
    • Products
    • Solution components
    • Data flow
    • Integrations
    • technical area
    • use case category
    • Business outcome
    • outcome category
    • Metrics
    • Architecture
    • evidence quotes
    • Publication date

Date evidence

  • Published on source page Jul 10, 2024 · Microsoft · First-party
    Open date source
Not separately sourced Industry, Region, Company size. Treat these normalized attributes as lower-confidence until a dedicated source is added.

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