Environment Agency Invitation to Tender for National Contract for Hydro Acoustic Instruments

Tender description

The Environment Agency's Hydrometry teams are responsible for assessing the quantity of water in the environment. This includes rivers and streams, groundwater aquifers and lakes. Hydro-acoustic instrumentation can be used to measure water in rivers and streams and in lakes and is a long term on going requirement. Hydro-acoustic instrumentation is bought and operated by area Hydrometry and Telemetry teams. Technical support, training and purchasing advice is provided by experts in the Water Resources Measurement Unit. This is a long term ongoing requirement. Hydro-acoustic instruments have been chosen by the Environment Agency as a very accurate and cost effective method of measuring water in the environment. The instruments can be broken down into three broad groups: - - Mobile profiling instruments - For medium streams to the largest rivers which are moved across river on flotation boat or unmanned 'drone' boat and are used to validate our flow gauging station network, providing a 'one-time' measurement of flow - Mobile point-velocity instruments for wading measurements in shallow water. These measurements are made at a number of locations across streams and provide a 'one-time' measurement of flow. - Fixed-deployment profiling instruments, including echo-correlation instruments for medium/large rivers. Fixed to bank/bed and provide a continuous reading of flow