Tag: 25000

Microsoft celebrates milestone of 25,000 trees planted in south and west Dublin

Microsoft Ireland today celebrated a milestone in its ongoing efforts to support community wellbeing and local biodiversity in south and west Dublin, with 25,000 trees planted across the area.

Coinciding with National Tree Week, the tree planting initiative, now in its third year, was delivered in collaboration with Trees on the Land, and brought together more than 300 volunteers from Microsoft, local community groups, schools and third level institutes to plant trees in communities near the Microsoft data centre campus in Grangecastle.

This year alone, over 8,000 trees have been planted as volunteers came together to improve existing landscape infrastructure and create more green spaces by planting mixed native tree cover at three sites across Dublin – St Aidan’s Community School, Ballyboden St Enda’s GAA Club and TU Dublin Blanchardstown campus.

In total, 15 different tree species were planted across the various sites including oak, birch and hazel, which in turn will help to reduce air pollution in the local community as the woodland matures. Enhancing these natural spaces will benefit local wildlife by providing a valuable source of food and shelter for birds, insects and other fauna.

Of the 8,000 trees planted this year, more than 4,000 trees were planted on the grounds of St Aidan’s Community School, which will provide a new woodlands area that can enable teachers at the school to deliver practical lessons on nature, biodiversity and sustainability. As part of the initiative, Microsoft also worked together with Clondalkin Tidy Towns to donate native trees to members of the local community to help improve the wellbeing of local residents.

Commenting on the milestone, Lavinia Morris, General Manager of Microsoft data centre operations for EMEA, said: “At Microsoft, we’re committed to empowering thriving and sustainable local communities where we operate, in line with our Data Centre Community Pledge. Planting 25,000 trees at various sites across south and west Dublin will help to deliver on this pledge, fostering sustainability and enhancing community wellbeing across the local community, while operating responsibly as a good neighbour.

“I’d like to give a special thanks to the many volunteers from Microsoft and the local community for their generous contribution to the initiative this year and look forward to seeing the positive impact of their work on the local community well into the future.”

Imogen Rabone, Project Coordinator at Trees on the Land, said: “We’re delighted to continue our long-standing partnership with Microsoft on this initiative. The 8,000 trees planted at the sites across south and west Dublin this year will help support local biodiversity and create greener natural spaces that directly benefit local residents. Many thanks to the volunteers from Microsoft and the local community for their brilliant help with the planting work on the ground.”

The tree planting initiative is one of the many ways in which Microsoft is supporting thriving and sustainable communities in south and west Dublin. Earlier this year, the company unveiled the Microsoft Community Fund for South Dublin, which will provide €100,000 in funding for local groups near the company’s data centre campus in Clondalkin to deliver impactful projects focusing on sustainability and digital skilling initiatives.

Since 2008 Microsoft has invested more than €4 million in initiatives that support thriving, sustainable communities in the vicinity of its data centre operations in Clondalkin, assisting more than 60 community projects and engaging 16,000 local people across South and West Dublin.

Galway County Council digitally maps the heritage of over 25,000 memorials

Esri Ireland, the market leader in geographic information systems (GIS), today announces that Galway County Council has digitally mapped over 25,000 memorials, monuments, and gravestones using Esri’s ArcGIS system. As part of a community-focused project across the county of Galway, Esri’s technology is being used to create a fully digitised process for capturing information about graveyard memorials and making it publicly accessible online.

Throughout Galway, there are 235 council-owned graveyards with ancient monuments and gravestones that provide invaluable insight into family ancestry and social history. Previously, community groups in Galway have endeavoured to capture this culturally significant information, using pen and paper to manually note memorial inscriptions.

Galway County Council’s interactive map, accessed through the Graveyard Memorial Search App, enables volunteers and heritage professionals to view and capture data and images in real-time on their mobile devices. It provides aerial photography of each graveyard, allowing users to zoom into pictorial maps of graveyards on their devices, and accurately identify each gravestone and record data pertaining to it. It also allows citizens to search for burial records and ancestors’ graves, and many graveyards can be explored in 3D, giving people an immersive, realistic experience of visiting family memorials.

The online map provides a streamlined, cloud-based process for collecting, validating, managing and sharing memorial data. It has made the process ten times faster and delivers more accurate and consistent data, which will help to preserve Galway’s graveyard heritage for future generations.

This is leading to increased community engagement, and more than 50 local groups are now using the solution. It is also being used by historians, archaeologists, genealogists and health researchers, as well as schools.

Already, data on over 35 graveyards is available via the app, providing citizens with easy, online access to ancestry information. With over 30 further graveyard surveys planned or in progress, Galway County Council, with support from the Heritage Council, is rapidly expanding the amount of information available via the app. The technology can also be replicated by other county councils and used by all kinds of community groups going forward.

Barry Doyle, GIS Manager, Galway County Council, said: “Simplicity is key to all of this. Everything is done in one efficient, seamless process where the data is stored and accessed centrally in the cloud. With this ArcGIS process we are enabling community groups to achieve their heritage objectives.”

Marie Mannion, Heritage Officer, Galway County Council, said: “Digitising Galway’s graveyard heritage has been a powerful way to enable people to learn about the local and national heritage that can be found in graveyards. People can now search for and find photographs of their family’s memorials online and form a stronger connection with their past. It’s an incredible resource for everyone.”

Jack Ffrench, Account Manager, Esri Ireland, said: “Being able to access local heritage, digitally, for Galway citizens has been a really important project to work on and exemplifies the true power of GIS technology. It is rewarding for us to be able to work with local communities, and bringing this important history to life will ensure that Galway’s past can become part of its present. We are looking forward to continuing to work with Galway County Council and seeing how this use case could be repeated within other councils, as well as a wide variety of community groups, in the future.”