News & Resources

In September we had teams surveying in the Thames Valley as part of a three stage threshold survey. Stage three covered houses from Marlow to Teddington. Over 1000 houses were surveyed at this stage, generating an approximate total of 3000 houses across the three stages of the threshold survey. The purpose of this survey was to assess the eligibility for a grant to help protect from future flooding and repair damage caused by previous flooding in the Thames Valley.

Storm Geomatics surveyors have spent eight weeks surveying for Gatwick Airport Limited. After last winter’s flooding at Gatwick Airport North Terminal, the Environment Agency, in partnership with Gatwick Airport Ltd commissioned Storm Geomatics to carry out river channel surveys across 20 watercourses to a length of 63km. The project involved analysing large amounts of historical data, and validating that information with on site observations.

For the fourth year running Storm Geomatics were asked to measure the distances at the Open Spey Casting Championships at the CLA Game Fair – this year at the beautiful Blenheim Palace. Spey casters from around the globe converge at the Game Fair every year and spend two days looking for that one cast that shoots further than anyone else which will get them a place in the final.

Surveyors at Storm Geomatics spent the majority of June on a challenge to capture critical data on hundreds of Environment Agency assets within the Midlands, Thames and Yorkshire regions. The company’s recent boost in capacity has opened doors to bigger projects with tighter deadlines – and this was no exception. Assets were supplied as GIS files by each region which the survey teams uploaded onto their Leica controllers.

The long awaited big show and conference for the Geomatics industry arrived on 28th and 29th May in the form of GeoBusiness. Through The Survey Association Mike Hopkins MD sat on the technical committee for the show which sifted through the 110 papers submitted to the parallel conference. The show was world class in every way providing a platform for international business in the geomatics sector. GeoBusiness is the brainchild of the three key survey organisations in the UK – TSA, RICS and CICES and was also heavily supported by the AGI.

A major energy company commissioned Storm Geomatics to measure the flow rates through a number of lock gates on The Manchester Ship Canal. The measurements are to be used to calculate the leakage through the gates and contribute towards an energy calculation for the installation of a new water turbine. Storm Geomatics combined forces with personnel from the new Storm Geomarine team to bring logistics, acoustic, positioning and analysis skills together to solve the problem. Site conditions were difficult, but good planning, experienced staff and a good understanding of the project outcomes provided the client with exactly the data they needed.

Ahead of the launch of their new business “Storm Geomarine” MD Mike Hopkins visited the huge show Oceanology International at London’s Excel. The exhibition broke all records as it saw the largest attendance in its series with approximately 8400 people attending. There were 528 exhibiting companies displaying a variety of marine technologies that are deployed in the many industries that now operate at sea.

PhotoMapp is a “must have” app for the iPhone. It creates working documents of your experiences with the minimum of effort. The vision with PhotoMapp is that we can use this mobile phone app to help us with our work by organising maps, images and notes all in one place to create an informative document of our subject. Having released PhotoMapp it appears that it is being used for many other applications as people want to share their location and thoughts as well as their pictures. Wath this space on PhotoMapp – it is being developed further to appeal to the global market.

Mike Hopkins spent two days at Lake Bala in North Wales back in the Autumn, he was preparing to measure Guy Martin’s world record attempt to be the man that has ridden a motorbike on water the furthest. The whole build up and attempt was shown on Channel 4’s “Speed” on 5th January with Mike featuring in the program on a number of occasions, sometimes in picture and others the spoken word!