The EIA process & ES content often fails to aid understanding of environmental and social effects by the general public, stakeholders and decision-makers. Overly-technical and impenetrable documents can make ‘significance’ hard to conceptualise or understand. But EIA should make environmental information more accessible and transparent.

Digital EIA offers the opportunity to increase the social value of the EIA process by better communicating the significant effects of projects through a variety of tools as well as the ES itself. Social media and other digital mediums provide a conduit for better consultation and engagement, creating unparalleled opportunities for data capture.

Embracing the visual and other presentational and analytical opportunities that working in a digital environment affords enables the findings of the EIA process to be presented in a highly holistic, interactive and intuitive way - tailored to the audience. It allows us to bring the scheme to life using film, animation and 3D graphics.

This presentation will demonstrate and discuss a number of tools linked to key stages of the project development and application process, providing an overview of practical applications and the social benefits of digital EIA in the context of transparency and accessibility of environmental information. It will also touch upon why written outputs will remain important in order to embrace the needs of different audiences.

Using Digital EIA to Increase a Project’s Social Value