Innovative GIS applications support the largest voluntary eco project in Bulgaria.

Sofia, 2 July 2015 – 10,460 tons of collected waste, over 1600 cleaned-up areas and a record number of volunteers in the five, clean-up days of the campaign “Let’s clean Bulgaria together” show the summarized data of the Ministry of Environment and Waters and bTV Media Group.

Over 1.2 million of volunteers took part in the largest eco campaign in Bulgaria this year. Their participation in the initiative was supported by mobile GIS applications for Android and Windows Phone, developed by ESRI Bulgaria, which enabled the participants to register and submit information about the cleaned-up areas directly on the spot using their smartphone. The innovative mobile solutions developed on Esri GIS platform, not only facilitated the process of marking the cleaned-up areas, but also played a key role in attracting a greater number of participants in the five days of the campaign.

In combination with the mobile applications, ESRI Bulgaria developed also a web GIS application with a mobile version for iOS, which enabled the participants to submit more information for the volunteers` number, location, type and size of cleaned-up areas via web. Esri Bulgaria developed a special back-office GIS system allowing the organizers of the campaign to review and validate the information submitted by volunteers, and to perform various types of reports and spatial analyses.

The analyses show that most active this year in the campaign were the volunteers in Silistra, and the biggest number of cleaned-up areas are in the Sofia municipality and in the town of Pleven.

“The results show that people take more and more care about the environment and have started forming environmental consciousness. Many volunteers have involved their children in the campaign, which means it has an educational effect”, said Minister of Environment and Waters Ivelina Vasileva.

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