83184Groundscreen Brownfield Risk CalculatorClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKCOVID-19 has resulted in the significant disruption to the construction and property sector, as well as having significant financial impacts on local authority revenues. Groundscreen is a cloud-based digital planning tool designed to identify and calculate abnormal ground conditions and clean-up costs prior to the detailed assessment and development of a site. It is intended to drive development on previously developed land and remove the uncertainties associated with assessing the viability of post-industrial brownfield land. Local authorities, planners, developers and purchasers of all sizes will be able to utilise this tool to have sight of issues before they derail a project, and to prioritise and target land disposal and further action as required. The tool is integrated within a Geographical Information System (GIS) and will be able to deliver relative risk scores and quantitative assessments of associated costs for inputs ranging from single sites to large UK-wide land holding portfolios. The outputs provide assessments of a) soil and groundwater contamination and b) geotechnical (soil, rock and mining) hazards. It is based on regional bespoke tools created by the British Geological Survey (BGS) for selected local authorities in 2019, and the national project is the result of collaboration between Groundsure and BGS. It is intended that the tool will be useful in the following areas * Landholder portfolio assessment * Prioritisation of brownfield land for disposal by local authorities * Developer planning * Individual site-level assessment This tool is not intended to replace the necessary environmental risk assessments of sites for development, but instead to help with the prioritisation and evaluation of sites in a complementary manner. It will reduce uncertainties and allow for efficient allocation of resources, whilst facilitating the sustainable reuse of brownfield land. Given the UK government's targets for prioritising brownfield land for the development of up to 300,000 new homes a year, it is vital that we create tools to break down the barriers to the utilisation of 'problematic' land. This tool uses publicly available datasets available for England and Wales to calculate its output, so there are no regional barriers to its deployment. The failure to appreciate the scale and cost of abnormal ground conditions can easily derail development even in the most high value projects. This project is intended to ensure the flow of land back into beneficial use, reducing project risk and enabling the 'brownfield first' policy for land reuse.