DHI Water & Environment has developed a tool called the Rapid Impact Assessment Matrix (RIAM) that helps to organise an Environmental Impact Assessment.
RIAM allows full transparency of the decisions made in an EIA. RIAM provides a holistic investigation covering four categories of environmental issues:
- physical and chemical issues
- biological and ecological issues
- sociological and cultural issues
- economic and operational issues
RIAM requires a scoping exercise to determine the important environmental components in each of the four categories, and allows for decisions on these components to be made and recorded, by assessing the beneficial or negative impacts against defined criteria and scales. Because of the simplicity of the RIAM System, results are capable of rapid presentation by use of graphical formats or alpha-numeric scaling.
The RIAM system is based on simple concepts and has been tested in a number of different conditions. Further research is being undertaken to improve the RIAM; and to extend its use to other areas of assessment, such as Strategic Environmental Assessment, Environmental Audit and the Evaluation of EIA reports.
More info on RIAM, and free download, go to the download page
See the RIAM library, where you can download examples of RIAM use: Library
RIAM Reporter, an extended RIAM program that makes it easy to produce well-planned EIA reports, has been released in 2003 (Not freeware). This program makes is easy to make well-planned EIA reports. For more info contact us.
Contact: Jesper Dannisøe