Organisation: ZSL and The Rivers Trust
Location: National
Type: Templates
Guidance, technical manuals, templates and examples of how to setup and run an Outfall Safari to get local volunteers involved in surveying sources of urban pollution.
One of the major threats to water quality in urban rivers is misconnected pipes. These send pollution into rivers via the surface water drainage system and compromise the biodiversity and amenity value of our waterways.
In partnership with Thames Water, the Environment Agency (EA), fellow NGO’s and communities in Greater London, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) has developed an innovative, citizen science method for locating, assessing the impact of, and reporting on these polluting pipes. This method is known as the Outfall Safari.
The Outfall Safari was first used on the River Crane in May 2016. Since then, Outfall Safaris have taken place on several other waterbodies in Greater London and the approach has been adopted by other UK-based environmental NGOs.
In order to support the spread of the Outfall Safari method and drive improvement in urban water quality across the country, ZSL and The Rivers Trust have created this guide and package of resources to assist environmental NGOs and water companies.
Read the guide first so that you understand how the methodology works and use the resources to help with the techncial aspects of setting up and running the outfall safari.
A guide to setting up and running an outfall safari to help tackle pollution in urban rivers
Read the Outfall Safari Guide first to work out whether EpiCollect5 or Survey123 best suits your requirements, then follow the technical manual to design and publish your data collection app for your volunteers to record the survey data
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