Episode 1 IT in the Workplace


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Manchester City Football Club is one of the Premier League's top sides.

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But maintaining the club's successful position isn't just down to the manager and the players.

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IT plays a significant role behind the scenes.

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Gavin and Ed in the performance analysis team constantly use IT.

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Our software is very varied and one of our biggest tasks

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is to research the best of those technologies

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and bring them in-house to match our needs.

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We use a range of products. It can be anything from analysing the team

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through video statistics. We have databases where we collect information season-long.

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We can break down the goals scored or conceded for the opposition teams, as well as our own data.

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Today, the performance analysis team is preparing for Manchester City's upcoming match against Stoke City.

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As a pre-match analyst, it's part of Gavin's job

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to give information to the manager and the players on the opposition's strengths and weaknesses.

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We build up an analysis package of that opposition team, so that we can tailor training that week.

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Gavin is keen to investigate the threat posed by Stoke City's long throw-ins.

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I've identified all of the throw-ins that Stoke City have taken.

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This is where the ball ends when Rory Delap takes a throw-in,

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so if I click on one of these, I think this one led to the goal.

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If you click on the event, it takes you straight to the video.

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We have a partnership with a company where we get 100% coverage of most of the European leagues.

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We can immediately access any stat, any single incidents from a player over the last four seasons.

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This helps when the manager is doing a training session.

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We can say, "When we're defending, you need to set up in these areas."

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The performance analysis team stores the information from these resources

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and records their own data to use in the future.

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We have different databases that we have access to. This one covers all areas of the football club.

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The sports science department use this to house all their information.

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For analysis, we can look at every goal scored and conceded by any club in the Premier League.

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The systems and databases provide you with a lot of opportunity to be really investigative into your work.

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With the game over, Ed deals with the post-match feedback,

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analysing his own players' performance.

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There are eight cameras based around the pitch and they all cover a particular area.

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They can tell us how fast they are running, how much movement they're doing.

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For example, Shaun's goal, what the animation allows you to do

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is to see where he was at any period of time. That can be very powerful,

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especially for work on technique and tactical play.

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We can put up, for example, his speed threshold.

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The closer it is to blue, the more that is to walking. The higher it gets to red, he's in a full sprint,

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so seven metres per second of movement.

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We take that information into the dressing room at half-time.

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IT ensures that the performance analysis results can be fed back to the players quickly and efficiently

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wherever they are.

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This is a little media device we use with our players. You can quickly access the hard drive on the system

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and copy on a video clip here.

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Within a couple of seconds, we should have access to the media device.

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The players may be on a plane or a train travelling to a game and quickly you can click on to an event

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and within five or ten seconds, you've got that video clip very accessible to you.

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Nine years ago, when I started, everything was on VHS. Now everything is on DVD.

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The shelves were as recently as five months ago filled with over 4,000 games

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and now that, plus more, is all completely online.

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That's over half a million minutes of video that we're able to get access to.

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I think IT, in our role, specifically as a performance analyst, is vital.

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I think we'd find it very difficult to function without it.

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It's match day at Manchester City Football Club.

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Today, almost 30,000 supporters have bought tickets to watch the game against Stoke City.

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And behind the scenes, IT systems ensure everything runs smoothly.

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Danny manages the ticketing team.

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Each supporter has their own unique supporter number

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that they use on the website, give over the telephone or use at the ticket office when buying a ticket.

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This number will unlock their profile and their purchase history,

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so members of our team understand clearly which games supporters have or haven't bought for

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and they can use that information to resolve any issues.

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With a stadium holding 48,000 people,

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it's important that the IT systems work seamlessly to avoid any problems on match day.

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Andy is the IT manager.

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On a match day, the IT team constantly monitor the networks

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to make sure that the infrastructure

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the turnstiles and access control system rely on is working 100%.

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The screens we look at are colour-coded, so we can see how full each area of the stadium is.

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On the morning of a game, we do a match download

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which downloads all the ticket information to the relevant turnstiles

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and allows the supporter access into the ground.

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If there's a problem with the access card, the stewarding team comes in with its PDA systems.

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You put the card on the PDA. It reads the chip inside it.

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It then tells you what seats have been booked on there

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and whether it is an old card. This is an old card.

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I see that a new card had been created and that's what they should have brought along,

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which is why they couldn't get into the turnstile today.

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If they go off to Supporter Services, we'll re-print them a paper ticket.

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The safety of supporters in the stadium is paramount to the football club.

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We've got to have that in the front of our minds in everything we do.

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IT is key to that, particularly on a match day.

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We need to know that all information has been sent to the turnstiles

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to allow supporters access through the entrances shown on their ticket.

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The IT team watch the flow control, which is the flow of people per minute coming into the stadium.

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Green means people have accessed the stadium OK.

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Anything that's a red colour means potentially there's been an issue.

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There's a code against that issue, things like "game not purchased, access denied".

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I think the technology allows us to be proactive, rather than reactive,

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so we can see problems generally before they happen.

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Everywhere we go, we're surrounded by the work of architects

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from hospitals and schools to sports stadia and theme parks.

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But how does IT help architects design and create new buildings?

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Gillian is a partner at Penoyre & Prasad.

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In our company, most of our buildings are in the public sector,

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so we build a lot of schools, health centres,

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hospitals, libraries, community buildings, as well as housing and some civic and social buildings.

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One of the new and striking projects that Gillian and her team are working on is the Wren Academy,

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a brand-new school for over 1,000 pupils in North London.

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The Wren Academy is near completion now.

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The first two phases are completed and occupied by the school.

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The last phase will open in the next couple of months.

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Will has been working on the Wren Academy Project for the last two years.

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This is using a Mac with VectorWorks.

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Here I've got the elevations for the Wren Academy North Block.

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We've set out all the information using this grid line.

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Every contractor and every part of the team has this grid

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and all our information is referenced off this.

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The computer program also allows Will to add layers or remove information on his digital drawings.

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There's information that's been sent to us from different parties of the project.

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This is all the furniture, so I can easily turn this layer off and on and send that to the contractor.

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In the design phase, Will uses the programs SketchUp and Photoshop to create images for the client.

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So this is the SketchUp file.

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These 2D lines, the black lines, were originally drawn in VectorWorks

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and that DWG has been exported.

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Then from that, you can help draw this model.

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Then we start adding information and people to this.

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Without the people, it's difficult to understand the scale of the space.

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The architect's role is to put spaces into a realistic form,

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so it's about showing a client what they think they can get to what they're going to get.

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And IT is used to ensure that the massively complex construction process at Wren Academy

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runs as smoothly and efficiently as possible.

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Vince is the project manager.

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The main two tasks obviously are making sure

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that the project is completed on time and within budget.

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I'm using the computer constantly, number one, for communication.

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When I go out on site, I may notice something that I don't think is quite right

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and I want to show to the architect, so I'll take a photograph, bring it back, load it on to the computer,

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email it to the architect and we can have discussions.

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On a building of this nature, there's a sequence that must be carried out.

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Within that sequence, there is what's called a critical path.

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That is certain activities that are identified that are crucial that happen on time and correctly.

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One of Vince's tasks is to create and monitor a spreadsheet

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which lists and schedules all the activities essential to the completion of the building.

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On the vertical axis, there is a list of all the activities identified

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and looking across horizontally, it will keep the positions

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of the particular activities within the overall sequence and the duration of each activity as well

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and how one activity can impact on to the other

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and really define the sequence of the construction.

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Today, on the roof, we're going to be carrying out the final glazing activity.

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We've previously started this activity and most of the top row is in now,

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but today, weather permitting, we'll get the rest of the units in.

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But rain sets in and the work has to be postponed.

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This will have an inevitable impact on the construction schedule.

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Because of the bad weather, we couldn't do the roofworks which has impacted on the project

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to the tune of four or five weeks.

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He'll have to inform the client via his monthly progress report.

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I will fill in areas where I feel there may be concerns.

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I will do a brief statement where I report on bad weather

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and also back that up with progress photographs.

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Now I need to look at the activities that are up and coming and how I re-sequence them.

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Even at the design stage, factoring in weather conditions

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which may affect the completed building is essential.

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We can use a 3D model of a building and bring that into our environmental software modelling

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and then look at the impact of wind and daylight.

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Ivan works with the environmental software.

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The location is quite important. That will have a different weather file

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which has different temperatures, rainfall, wind

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and that has a big impact on the building.

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The nearest weather file is London Weather Centre ten miles away.

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We'll also input what type of building it is.

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We specify the types of room because if it's an office,

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it will have a lot less people per metre squared than a school.

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The classroom is quite packed with 30 or so pupils and we all give off 100 watts of heat just sitting down.

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The software models daylight coming into a building.

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This part of the simulation here is for daylighting. This is one of the art classrooms.

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Here we see that it's quite bright towards the south window because it's getting direct daylight.

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If we found bits of the room were quite dark and dingy,

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we could look at ways of introducing skylights

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or you could reconfigure the depth of the room, so you get light penetrating into the room.

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We couldn't operate without IT

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and if you ever get computer crashes, which can happen, the office has to stop.

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We heavily rely on IT and it's fantastic what it enables us to do.

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Farming in the 21st century is changing dramatically.

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With strict standards to maintain, traceability to guarantee and targets to hit,

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farmers spend more and more time in front of computer screens.

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IT plays a big part in the day-to-day running of the farm.

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Everything's going over computerised, registering the calves, paying staff.

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Brothers Mike and Chris run Middle Burrow Farm in Devon.

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Most of the companies we deal with now want us to use online technology.

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All the information on the cows is stored on the computer now.

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We can register pedigrees, look at our National Milk Records.

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But Mike and Chris have gone further

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and invested hundreds of thousands of pounds in state-of-the-art technology,

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including computerised milking robots.

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This is a milking robot and we've had it here about 12 months now. We've got two of them.

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We used to do the milking twice a day, but now we've got the situation

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that they milk any time of the day, really, and night.

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And there is no need for a farmer to be there at all during milking.

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When she comes into the stall, the two ends come together,

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so it tells the computer where the cow is

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and so the arm comes out then and picks up the teat cup

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and then comes near to the udder.

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When it gets near to the udder, the two infra-red cross-beams

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pick up where the teat is and then the robot arm

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puts a cup on the teat.

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You see the blue dome hanging down on the collar? That's a transponder.

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The transponder IDs that cow.

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It says this cow is, like that cow there, 124.

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And on the computer, it has all her information, where her teats are,

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when she's calved, how fast she milks, any problems she had.

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It tells you everything.

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Everything that happens in the 24 hours is recorded here.

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The blue means they need to be milked, then it goes yellow,

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which is basically saying they're coming near milking.

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The white ones have all been milked recently.

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As the machine is working 24/7, if there is a problem with the machine,

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it will ring the farmer on his mobile and tell him that there is a problem.

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Some things he can put right over the phone or with a laptop computer.

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The milking robot also analyses samples of milk from each cow,

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helping farmers to monitor the health of their cattle.

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It tells you the cell count, the white blood cells of the cow.

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That's how it fights infection in its udder. If you go down here,

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we can see 898 is a cow that's just given birth to a calf

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and when we put it on the graph,

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you can see...

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blood is red and it's showing quite high levels of blood in the milk.

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That will be gone within four days.

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Even more information about each cow is recorded

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by an activity meter on each cow's collar.

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If you have a low activity, the cow may be ill,

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something could be wrong with her

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or she could be lame.

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That is picked up by an aerial in the shed

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and is transponded right down into the computer,

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which gives you a graph

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and it plots all points how active she is through the day.

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When the meter records a high level of activity,

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it indicates that a cow

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is ready to be artificially inseminated or served.

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It shows here her activity and you've got

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a peak here when she needed artificially inseminating.

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You see there how it's quite high, the peak there?

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And this point here shows us when she was served.

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A new calf is born on average every two days at the farm.

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The computer database has to be updated each time.

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We've just had a cow calve and she's given birth.

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I've got to find her on the computer

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and enter her details, so that she can be milked.

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190 is the one that calved,

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so we click her there and bring her up.

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This is her details.

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Her breeding event is that she's calved, which is this one - calving.

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It's started the countdown. Days in milk,

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DIM, it says nought. Her first day to be milked is today.

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Basic IT skills are now essential for any farmer.

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IT definitely improves things quite a bit.

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You're not tied to a certain job

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at a certain time seven days a week now.

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In this day and age, farmers have to be very up

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with the IT to keep track of what their animals are doing.

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Everything is done over the internet nowadays

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and we like to keep up with it.

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SIREN WAILS

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The use of technology in a fire service is really about maintaining the safety of people we look after,

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the people we serve, but also looking after our own people.

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So IT is a really crucial part of running a modern-day fire service.

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Fire and Rescue. Can I take your postcode, please? What's on fire?

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-All right. Stay well away.

-'We can't afford to make a mistake.'

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The mistakes that we make could be a life. Simple as that.

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From the moment a member of the public reports a fire to Surrey Fire and Rescue Service,

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IT steps in and plays a crucial role.

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The computer systems automatically detect the caller's phone number.

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It's the operator's job to ask for the postcode or find out specific details of where the incident is.

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You put the postcode in and it selects the address for you.

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All the time we're reducing the time it takes to get the machines on the road.

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The computers also tell the team which fire engines are best suited for a particular emergency.

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Depending on the fire call, for example, "road traffic collision, person trapped",

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we need heavy cutting gear.

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If we are sent to fuel spillages or major fires, we need foam.

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Every appliance has a piece of equipment that is useful to us. We have to send the right one.

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ALARM RINGS

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There's the alarm going off now.

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The printer's telling us where to go and it's come up on the screen.

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I've now pressed that button so Control know we've mobilised. Off we go.

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When we mobilise to an incident, the first thing to come up is the alert on the screen

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which we touch to acknowledge. That tells Control we're mobilised.

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As the crew is on the move, the computer gives instant access

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to an immense amount of relevant information.

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It allows us to look at the route to travel.

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It can bring us up house plans, building layouts.

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If we're attending an incident, if it's a school or hospital

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we can bring up the design plans of the building,

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which gives us information on the location of stairwells, gas, water mains.

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It also gives vehicle information for a road traffic incident.

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It will show us hazards that might be related to that vehicle.

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But it will also start showing us where things are on the vehicle that we'll need to activate -

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battery isolations, the location of air bags.

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If we need to remove parts of the vehicle, it shows high-risk areas.

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The computer also offers language information.

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It gives a scrolling pattern of countries' names.

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It gives me lists of standard questions which we would ask anybody involved in the incidents.

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"What is your name?" "Do you speak English?" "Where is the fire?" "Is anybody else in the building?"

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The information we hold comes from a variety of different sources.

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We have specialist people that go out and inspect buildings and collate information on risks.

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We also get information from local councils, the Environment Agency, from the National Trust.

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All that information is collated to go into one system.

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The IT team is responsible for gathering the vast amount of information available to crews.

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Today, Julia is updating the system with a house survey completed by a firefighter.

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The crew gathered all the data likely to be dangerous.

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We take it into this office and then create the files.

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They can see it on their map. They click on that and the information comes up in a document.

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-Is this one completed, Gordon?

-It is. We're looking at plans of a local hospital.

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We've got all the electrical and gas entry points on and hazard points.

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It's our responsibility to put the symbols correctly on the plans from information we've been given.

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How do the onboard computers on the fire engines receive the information the team are updating?

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When vehicles drive into the appliance bay, it synchronises with the wireless network

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and checks to see if there are any updates it needs to download.

0:22:530:22:57

We also run an actual private network and it allows us to push information out to the vehicle wherever it is.

0:22:570:23:05

Even when the fire engine is on its way to the emergency, the job of the control centre staff isn't over.

0:23:070:23:14

They manage the situation remotely.

0:23:140:23:17

We stay in contact with the machines until the job is finished.

0:23:170:23:22

Whatever they require, we will get for them.

0:23:220:23:26

We've got action plans to follow, depending on what the incident is.

0:23:260:23:31

If it's animals, it will prompt us to contact the RSPCA.

0:23:310:23:35

If it's chemicals, it will prompt us to contact the Environment Agency.

0:23:350:23:40

Since the introduction of IT,

0:23:400:23:42

the input of data has been a lot more efficient. A lot easier, less paperwork.

0:23:420:23:48

IT is a very important aspect of the job

0:23:480:23:51

and training and being skilled is paramount. We can't risk mistakes. It's reducing risks at all times.

0:23:510:23:58

Created in 1759, the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

0:24:040:24:11

Over 650 people work behind the scenes.

0:24:110:24:16

In the Princess of Wales Conservatory, Mike, a horticulturist, is the manager.

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Part of his job is to make sure conditions in each of the climatic zones in the conservatory

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are maintained correctly.

0:24:270:24:30

We're in the Arid Zone, Zone 3.

0:24:300:24:33

We have the cacti and succulents and some of the island flora.

0:24:330:24:37

In each zone of the conservatory, the environmental variables are different.

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We have different temperatures, humidity levels and ventilations.

0:24:430:24:47

These variables are controlled by a computer program.

0:24:470:24:51

On this screen here you can see all the ten zones.

0:24:510:24:54

Each zone in the conservatory has a sensor for humidification, and for temperature.

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These are updating the computers every four minutes.

0:25:000:25:04

Each zone is given the minimum and maximum humidity level, relative humidity,

0:25:040:25:10

and they stay in those parameters. Once it gets below, say, 70% relative humidity,

0:25:100:25:16

the misting will come on.

0:25:160:25:18

Sometimes Mike has to change the parameters on the computer.

0:25:180:25:23

As it's getting sunnier now, we want to increase humidity levels.

0:25:230:25:27

We go into Settings and Misting.

0:25:270:25:30

And then we increase the minimum humidity level to 60%.

0:25:300:25:35

And the maximum humidity levels to 70%.

0:25:350:25:38

By setting them higher, that increases the misting levels.

0:25:380:25:43

How were climatic variables like ventilation, temperature and humidity controlled

0:25:430:25:49

before computers arrived?

0:25:490:25:51

In the older glasshouses, the vents were opened by ropes and pulleys.

0:25:510:25:55

The heating would be controlled by motorised valves.

0:25:550:26:00

Now it's all done by computer.

0:26:000:26:02

Another one of Mike's tasks is to update the plant database

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which holds information about every plant in Kew Gardens.

0:26:080:26:12

The database is used throughout the gardens and covers all the plants in the gardens

0:26:120:26:19

so that each plant with an accession number

0:26:190:26:22

can be looked up on the database.

0:26:220:26:24

So today we've got an agave flowering in the Arid Zone

0:26:240:26:28

which needs updating.

0:26:280:26:30

You click on January and save that information.

0:26:300:26:33

I'll also need to put in a note here to collect seed off the plant.

0:26:330:26:39

The job of updating and keeping the records is ongoing.

0:26:390:26:43

It's changing all the time.

0:26:430:26:46

If we're sending a plant to another botanic garden, for instance, we can pint off the database notes

0:26:460:26:52

so they've got a close record of how the plant was collected, its country of origin, et cetera.

0:26:520:26:58

There's another database being compiled at Kew Gardens,

0:26:580:27:02

not of living plants, but the huge collection of preserved plant specimens from all over the world

0:27:020:27:09

which are stored in the Herbarium.

0:27:090:27:12

We're in the Herbarium at Kew. In the cupboards are specimens.

0:27:120:27:17

The Herbarium you could think of as a library of plants.

0:27:170:27:21

The specimens are the pressed plants with their stems, leaves, petals.

0:27:210:27:26

The Global Plants Initiative is an international collaborative project between

0:27:260:27:33

over 147 herbaria in over 52 countries.

0:27:330:27:38

Many of the plant specimens date back to the 1800s, 1820s.

0:27:380:27:42

The project as a whole is aiming to digitise two million plant specimens.

0:27:420:27:48

These are being brought together in one online environment.

0:27:480:27:52

Today Aisleyne from the Global Plants Initiative team

0:27:520:27:56

is creating a digital record of another preserved plant.

0:27:560:28:00

She's off to the Herbarium to find her specimen.

0:28:000:28:04

I've just collected a type specimen. It's a barberi species,

0:28:040:28:10

which we will take to database and scan.

0:28:100:28:12

It involves putting a colour chart and ruler on.

0:28:120:28:16

The colour chart is so we can compare the true colours.

0:28:160:28:20

The scanners that we have are upside down

0:28:200:28:23

so the specimen can face upwards and we don't have to turn it upside down, as it's quite fragile.

0:28:230:28:30

It's quite a high resolution. It takes about three minutes to scan.

0:28:300:28:34

And we make a record of this in the spreadsheet

0:28:340:28:37

where we put the barcode

0:28:370:28:40

and then the date we scanned it on.

0:28:400:28:42

And we also put the resolution that we scanned the image - 600 dots per inch.

0:28:420:28:48

Once the Herbarium specimen has been databased and imaged,

0:28:480:28:52

it can be found here. If we look up a specimen,

0:28:520:28:56

this is called Stapelia hirsuta.

0:28:560:29:00

This website brings together several resources on plant science.

0:29:000:29:05

It includes paintings, floras, maps, illustrations.

0:29:050:29:09

And we can zoom in and see the fine detail of the hairs on a petal.

0:29:090:29:15

We can also measure the length of the petal.

0:29:150:29:19

We have already imaged 140,000 specimens, so you need to have large databases

0:29:200:29:26

to be able to manipulate the data accurately.

0:29:260:29:30

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd.

0:29:440:29:47

E-mail [email protected]

0:29:470:29:50

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