The Yearly Survey Planner: How to Schedule River Surveys for Better Flood Risk Outcomes

To be better supported Storm Geomatics has developed the Yearly Survey Planner, a practical guide to the optimum times of year to gain maximum results from a river or watercourse survey. It is a free resource available to anyone requiring a river or watercourse survey.

While checking a calendar is the first step, engaging with experts early provides a critical “health check” for your project. An initial consultation helps define the precise scope of work and realistic timeframes before a surveyor even sets foot on site.

Before a surveyor even steps on site, an expert desktop review conducted by a hydraulic modeller such as the experts at Aegaea or expert surveyors at Storm Geomatics. Use of aerial imagery and GIS data is essential. This “health check” acts as a diagnostic tool to define the scope and feasibility of the project by:

• Characterising the Catchment: Identifying whether the area is urban or rural helps determine the complexity of the survey, such as the density of infrastructure or the presence of new housing developments that may have changed the landscape since the last model was built.
• Spotting “Seasonal Enemies”: Reviewing vegetation and woodland canopies allows us to predict access barriers. If a river bank is heavily overgrown, we can schedule work outside of summer months to avoid the “green wall” that delays data capture. Specialists who work in water daily can identify the specific “seasonal enemies” – such as winter high flows or summer vegetation – that might threaten your specific location. They can advise on scheduling to maximise your investment, ensuring you don’t pay for downtime waiting for water levels to recede.
• Locating Critical Structures: We can pinpoint bridges, culverts, and crossings in advance, ensuring the method statement accounts for specific measurement techniques required for skewed bridges or complex assets.
• Assessing Access & Safety: Checks against conservation sites (SSSIs) and land ownership databases allow for a dynamic risk assessment, preventing access refusals and ensuring the team is prepared for “hostile” or protected environments.

By diagnosing these landscape characteristics early, we can tailor the scope of work and set realistic timeframes, ensuring your project doesn’t face unexpected delays or budget overruns due to foreseeable site conditions.

• Refining the Method Statement: Early review allows for the creation of a robust Method Statement. This document justifies the survey approach, assessing existing information to ensure the proposed work is in line with current standards and reducing the risk of objections later in the planning process.
• Site Walkovers: For complex watercourses, a joint walkover with the surveyor is invaluable. It allows all parties to agree on detailed requirements that might be ambiguous on paper and ensures the surveyor is aware of critical data specific to your site.

While all types of survey can be conducted throughout the year, there are certain months best avoided for certain types of survey. For example, conducting a topographic survey in the summer months of July, August and September, is possible, but delays occur often due to excess vegetation. This in turn can hinder access to the watercourses and slow down progress.

Storm’s surveyors are trained to pick up features often missed by non-specialist surveyors, adding significant value to the data collected to optimise design and modelling decisions.

From a project manager’s point of view, procuring a river survey brings familiar challenges: budgets, land access, programme constraints and ensuring the correct scope is delivered on time. When winter weather and high‑risk river conditions are added into the equation, and those challenges can quickly escalate. Meaning deadlines slip and budgets are blown!

A quick scan of Storm’s Yearly Survey Planner can expedite any potential issues caused through seasonal issues.

For flood risk projects in particular, timing is critical. Surveying high‑risk watercourses during the appropriate season helps manage safety, improves data quality and ultimately ensures the outputs are fit for purpose. High flows, saturated catchments and rapidly changing river conditions can significantly affect both access and survey outcomes. When planning these projects, it’s essential that all stakeholders know and understand the most appropriate survey windows. Instructing survey companies at the right time of year leads to better quality data, smoother delivery and stronger project metrics for everyone involved.

If your next project requires a survey of a river or watercourse then a good place to start would be to check out Storm’s Watercourse Survey FAQs. Providing further practical guidance on survey best practise.

By combining Aegaea’s modelling expertise with Storm Geomatics’ high-quality data capture, we remove the guesswork from flood risk projects. We help you navigate the seasons, satisfy regulatory standards, and deliver the correct information at the earliest opportunity.

This is the second article in our series on seasonal planning for flood risk projects – if you missed it, you can read our first blog here: Timing is Everything: How Seasons Impact Your Flood Risk Survey (and Your Deadline)