Galway Graveyards Mapping Project receives national award

Galway County Council has received na‐ tional recognition for its project, ‘Digi‐ tizing Galway’s Graveyard Heritage,’ which was named overall winner of the ‘Community Engagement’ category of Esri Ireland’s annual ‘Customer Success Awards’ held in Dublin.

The innovative digital project has mapped over 40,000 graveyard memo‐ rial records across County Galway and made the records publicly available on‐ line.

Working with and supported by Galway Rural Development, Forum Connemara, The Heritage Council, The National Mon‐ uments Service and Galway County Community Archaeology Service, Gal‐ way County Council provided funding to local groups to employ experts to train local communities to use mobile tech‐ nology and to undertake drone mapping of graveyards resulting in a public re‐ lease 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 Digi‐ tal Transformation Awards last October. “The success of the Digital Mapping of Graveyards Project is the result of forensic research and cutting-edge sur‐ veying work by the Local Authority’s Heritage department and local commu‐ nities across Galway," said Cllr. Liam Carroll, Cathaoirleach of Galway County Council.

"This award win is testament to the in‐ novative nature of the project and its benefit to the diaspora and academia at home and abroad.”

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 organizations to collect and collat‐ ing valuable data relating to those who are buried in various graveyards for sev‐ eral years.”

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

“This technology, along with drone tech‐ nology, was made available to local community groups to expand the num‐ ber of graveyards in the project result‐ ing in the 40,000 records that are now publicly available.”

Esri Ireland is the global market leader in GIS and their software is used widely in Ireland in both public and private sec‐ tor organisations, including most local authorities.

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