That detail is held largely in documents. Geotechnical reports, hazard assessments, condition surveys and consultant studies record ground conditions, flood behaviour, coastal processes and asset performance at a resolution that regional datasets rarely match. For councils, utilities and infrastructure operators, this body of reports represents years of commissioned investigation and much of the organisation's knowledge of individual places.

Evidence organised by project rather than place

Most organisations store these documents according to how they were commissioned rather than what they describe. Reports sit in project folders, contract records, internal systems, external websites and individual inboxes, and the location each one concerns is recorded in its text rather than as information that can be searched. The consultants and contractors doing current work typically see only the part of this record that someone has passed to them, and three consequences follow.

• Earlier investigations get commissioned again. A team scoping a stormwater upgrade can end up paying for a geotechnical investigation that a previous project already completed, because the original report sits in a closed project folder.

• External teams work from superseded reports. A consultant given an older hazard assessment can produce design or planning advice that no longer reflects current evidence, and the gap often surfaces only at review.

• Decisions rest on whatever could be found in time. Under deadline pressure, the evidence shaping a capital programme or a consent decision is the evidence someone located, which is not always the most complete or current.

These consequences are governance problems as much as administrative ones. A planning or investment decision is harder to explain and defend when the evidence behind it cannot be traced, and the knowledge held in past assessments erodes as the people who commissioned them move on. The problem this article addresses is therefore how documentary evidence can be organised around the places it describes, so that it can be retrieved for the decision at hand and shared with everyone doing the work without losing control of sensitive material.

Describing and classifying evidence consistently

Retrieval depends first on description. Evidence that is classified inconsistently, or not at all, can only be found by someone who already knows it exists, which reproduces the reliance on individual memory that a shared library is meant to remove.

Documents, now available in Resilience Explorer®, addresses this through a shared classification scheme. The organisation sets the categories and teams build a common set of tags, so material is described and found in the same way across the organisation. Files can be uploaded and described in batches while each keeps its own record, which reduces the administrative effort that often prevents a library from being populated in the first place.

Once evidence is described, users search, filter by category and tag and sort by date to reach the relevant assessment. Reports can be previewed as PDFs within Resilience Explorer®, and related evidence can be grouped into collections for a project or plan, so past assessments remain usable after the people who commissioned them have moved on.

Georeferencing evidence and representing scale

The second requirement is a spatial index. In Documents, each file is georeferenced to the asset, site or area it covers using a pin, a drawn area or an address, and that location is recorded and displayed with the file. A flood study is therefore associated with the catchment it describes, and a geotechnical report with the site it investigated.

Georeferencing changes how evidence can be retrieved. An asset manager evaluating a bridge renewal, a planner assessing a development application and an emergency manager reviewing an access route each need the evidence for a specific location, together with evidence for the network around it. When location is recorded as data, those questions can be answered from the place itself rather than from knowledge of which project produced which report.

Recording location also makes the scale of evidence explicit. A regional flood model and a site-specific geotechnical investigation can both apply to the same parcel, yet they describe it at very different resolutions and with different levels of certainty. Distinguishing a point from a wider area helps users weigh site-specific findings against wider-area evidence, and reduces the risk that a coarse dataset is read as establishing exact site conditions.

Sharing evidence across organisational boundaries

The third requirement concerns access. Much of the work that relies on site evidence is carried out by consultants and contractors, who need the relevant prior investigations but should not have access to an organisation's internal document systems.

In Documents, access runs through the user groups already managed in Resilience Explorer®. Each file can remain private or be shared with selected groups, and permissions are checked on every download. External partners therefore work from the same evidence base as internal staff while sensitive material, such as reports on critical sites, remains restricted, and a consultant beginning a new engagement can start from the existing record for that site rather than requesting it piece by piece.

From document library to risk evidence

Taken together, consistent description, georeferencing and controlled access allow documentary evidence to function as part of an organisation's risk evidence base rather than as an archive. Decisions can then rest on the complete record for a place, rather than on whatever someone could locate in time.

Documents is included as standard in Resilience Explorer®, and existing clients can use it now. Because each file's location is captured at upload, a future update will let teams find documents by location and see them alongside the hazard and risk information for the same place. At that point, a user reviewing the modelled consequences of flooding for a group of assets will be able to open the investigations behind that result and judge how much weight the underlying evidence can carry.

Take the two-minute tour to see how teams upload, tag, filter and organise their evidence, or book a 20-minute walkthrough to see Documents with your own material in mind.

Frequently asked questions

What is Documents in Resilience Explorer®?

Documents is a module of Resilience Explorer® that gives climate and natural hazard evidence a shared, searchable library. Teams upload reports, plans and assessments, describe and tag them, georeference each file to the place it covers and control who can see it.

What kinds of documents does it hold?

Documents is designed for the evidence organisations hold about specific places and assets. Typical examples include geotechnical reports, hazard assessments, condition surveys, consultant studies and adaptation or infrastructure plans. The upload step sets no file type or size restrictions, so drawings, spreadsheets, images and spatial data can sit alongside PDF reports, which can also be previewed within Resilience Explorer®.

How are documents linked to a location?

Each file is georeferenced by a pin, a drawn area or an address. The location is recorded and displayed with the file, so evidence stays connected to the asset, site or area it describes.

Can consultants and contractors use Documents?

Yes. Access runs through the user groups you manage in Resilience Explorer®, so external partners see the files shared with their group without access to your internal document systems. Permissions are checked on every download.

How is Documents different from a shared drive?

A shared drive organises files by folder and project. Documents organises the same material by place, category and tag, within the environment where teams analyse climate and natural hazard risk, with access set by user group.

Is Documents an additional cost?

No. Documents is included as standard in Resilience Explorer®, and existing clients can use it now.