Use cases
Councils and public-sector teams use Groundwork for the kinds of data below, each kept accurate by the staff closest to it.
Every dataset deserves a custodian
A custodian is the person who knows a dataset best and is trusted to keep it right. Groundwork makes your staff the custodians of the data they already work with: each gets the layers they're responsible for, and their changes are saved to the organisation's live data. If your team keeps information about places, Groundwork can hold it.
Asset & infrastructure defects
A crew finds a cracked footpath and logs it on the spot, on the phone already in their pocket. A link to that one feature sends a contractor straight to it.
Parks, trees & open space
A tree register stays accurate when the arborist inspecting the tree can update its record there and then. Everyone reading it sees today's register.
Environmental monitoring
Environmental officers walking a site map what they find there: weed outbreaks, revegetation plots, watercourse condition. The whole team works from the same picture.
Planning & development
Planners record what they see on a site visit, from a heritage detail to the state of a development site, on the same map the office reads.
Public health & compliance
Compliance work is a list of places: food-premises checks, pool barriers, septic systems. Groundwork keeps that list on a map, ordered by real travel distance, so an officer can work through an area in one pass.
Emergency management
Share sandbag points, evacuation centres and flood markers with the public as a view-only link, with no account needed at the other end. Update the map when the situation changes, and everyone who reopens the link sees it.
Waste & amenity
Illegal dumping, graffiti and litter become features on the map, logged where they happen by the compliance and waste teams that deal with them.
Community & cultural assets
Public art, memorials and heritage sites carry stories as well as coordinates. Description and category fields hold the detail, and the map is ready to share with the community as view-only.
Cemetery management
Plots and interment records ask for accuracy above all. Search finds the record, the map frames the plot, and a link answers a family's enquiry with the exact spot.
And the one-off maps
An event footprint or a temporary road closure is data too, published the same way, shared as a link, and taken down when the event is over.
Start with the map you already need
See the Features page for everything Groundwork does, or the Administrator Guide to publish your first map.