Digital EIA is finally here.
For three decades, the Environmental Impact Assessment has been written for the archive, not the decision — thousands of pages of PDF that few can read and no one can reuse. The regulation, the technology and the profession have now arrived at the same moment. The paper era of environmental assessment is over.
We came into this work to protect the environment — not to copy and paste the same evidence from one document to the next. Our time belongs to the land, the communities it shapes and the wellbeing of all who depend on it. Strip away the document busywork, so the profession can return to the work that matters.
What we built, and what it cost us
The Environmental Statement was meant to protect the environment by informing the decision. Instead it became a document so large, so static and so slow that it now obscures the very information it carries. The evidence is consistent across the profession.
An Environmental Statement for a single 500-home development can run to thousands of pages — far beyond what any reader, or decision-maker, can absorb.
Each technical chapter costs thousands of pounds to produce — manual, repetitive work that is largely re-done from scratch on the next project.
Costly baseline survey data is delivered as static PDF, in no shared standard, and is effectively inaccessible to the next assessment. We re-survey the same ground.
Statements have grown to exceed the cognitive capacity of decision-makers to assimilate them — too much data, too little insight, with public scrutiny crowded out.
The pieces have finally lined up
Digital EIA is not a forecast. It is a transition already in motion — written into law, funded by government and adopted by the profession, all within a handful of years.
The profession sets the direction
IEMA publishes Digital Impact Assessment: A Primer — among the first formal guidance from a major professional body on digitising assessment practice.
A blueprint emerges
Connected Places Catapult and Quod map the digital EIA process end-to-end and propose the missing infrastructure: a shared, standardised National Environment Datahub.
It becomes law
The Levelling-up and Regeneration Act establishes the legal framework for Environmental Outcomes Reports — an outcomes-based, data-led successor to the EIA/SEA regime — with implementation to follow.
The world agrees it matters
At IAIA 2025 in Bologna, the global impact-assessment community convenes on artificial intelligence and digital practice — drawing more than a thousand delegates from 83 countries.
The transition begins in earnest
Mandatory planning-data standards take hold and preparations for the move to Environmental Outcomes Reports advance — with government digital tooling pointing to assessment preparation that is markedly faster and more accurate.
We hold these to be true
Digital EIA is not a new format for the same document. It is a different way of working — grounded in seven principles.
Above all, we are here to protect the environment — not to pour our days into moving the same evidence from one document into the next.
Structured data, not static PDFs
An assessment is a set of evidence and judgements, not a printout. Capture it as structured data first, and let the report be one of its views — never the only one.
Machine-readable by default
If a regulator, a model or the public cannot query it, it is not finished. Open standards make assessment interoperable across tools, disciplines and jurisdictions.
Collected once, reused forever
Baseline survey data is a public asset, not a single-use cost. It should be discoverable, standardised and reusable — so no one re-surveys the same ground twice.
Transparent and interrogable in public
Interactive maps and dashboards replace dense text. When communities can actually read the evidence, engagement becomes meaningful rather than ceremonial.
Collaborative and version-controlled
Multidisciplinary teams write one living assessment together — not a relay of Word files and spreadsheets reconciled by email at the end.
Proportionate — outcomes over volume
The measure of an assessment is the quality of the decision it enables, not the weight of paper it produces. Less document, more insight.
Auditable and defensible by construction
Every change, every assumption, every contributor recorded as it happens — so the assessment is defensible by design, not reconstructed after the fact.
An assessment you can see, query and trust
Picture the whole assessment on a single live board: every discipline chapter, its status and the people working on it, in agreement from first brief to public review. Receptors, effects and significance scored once and consistent everywhere they are cited. Baseline data that flows in as structured layers and out as reusable record.
This is the assessment ConsentPath was built to write.
- One live board for the whole Environmental Statement
- Interactive maps and dashboards instead of dense PDF
- Reusable, standardised baseline data
- AI-assisted screening, scoping and import
- A full audit trail, defensible by construction
Digital EIA is finally here. Help us build it.
If you assess, consent, commission or care about the environment, this transition needs you. Sign the manifesto and tell us you would like to participate.
Championed by ConsentPath (opens in a new tab)