River Condition Assessment FAQs

What is River Condition Assessment (RCA)?
River Condition Assessment involves a field and desk based survey to assess the condition of a watercourse. Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) is expected to become mandatory in Winter 2023 and an RCA will be required if a watercourse falls within a development site boundary.
What Storm Geomatics can offer you?
Storm Geomatics can provide an RCA which will not only comply with new BNG requirements but can also provide an insight in to how to effectively plan and manage a range of projects including, but not limited to, development, restoration, and conservation projects. Storm Geomatics can provide the following services;

Baseline RCA (Pre-project)

• Required for BNG reporting.
  Post-project RCA
• Assessing the effectiveness of implemented interventions.
  Monitoring RCA
• As part of an ongoing monitoring programme to assess changes in condition.
  Scenario Testing
• Testing a range of proposed interventions toidentify the most beneficial and/or cost-effectivesolution to achieve BNG, or other, goals.
• How does it work and how is the data viewed?
• A field survey is conducted, documenting the presence of 32 condition indicators on the top of the bank, the bank face and channel bed.
• A desk-based river type survey is performed to categorise the watercourse into 1 of 15 classes.
• These 2 components are consolidated to provide the final condition class (1-5/Poor to Good). An RCA report provides numerical values for each of the 32 indicators, and final preliminary score along with a final condition class. These values can be directly placed into the Biodiversity Metric
  Tool (BMT).
• 
  Why choose Storm Geomatics?
• Water safety qualified surveyors able to enter the watercourse to record accurate observations.
• Access to survey grade GNSS providing high accuracy channel measurements.
• We offer this service either on its own or we run it alongside our other services, such as our hydraulic modelling surveys, for a fuller scope of project.