Open Call
Expression of interest: IPEC coastal erosion and environmental monitoring
Overview
Many coastal authorities are under increasing pressure to monitor flood risk, coastal erosion and environmental change, while balancing limited resources and growing demands.
Following a successful project with Somerset Council to explore how drone technology could improve coastal asset management and environmental monitoring, IPEC is inviting forward-thinking local and combined authorities to explore similar innovation procurement challenges.
Through IPEC, Somerset Council explored how innovative approaches to environmental monitoring could provide faster access to data, support better decision-making, and strengthen the evidence needed to manage risks and prioritise investment. The challenge, approach and key lessons are now captured in a new case study that could help other authorities facing similar challenges.
Why join:
- Access innovation procurement support from Catapult experts
- Access insights from real-world pilot projects
- Tailor procurement solutions to your local and regional challenges
- Explore collaboration opportunities and future participation
- Learn from peers facing similar challenges
This programme could support you with:
- Supplier identification
- Trial strategy
- Trial facilitation
- Procurement and scaling strategy
- Technical support & stakeholder relationship
- Empowerment support
The IPEC cohort is a support programme for councils and local authorities and there is no financial cost to join the cohort. The programme aims to eliminate financial barriers in procurement and make innovative procurement practices accessible to a wide range of public authorities.
If you’re a public sector organisation with a coastal erosion or environmental monitoring challenge to solve, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch at contact@ipec.org.uk by 13 August to express your interest and find out how IPEC could help tackle your challenge.
Challenge
Climate change is driving more frequent, intense and complex flooding and coastal risks. Yet traditional inspections remain slow, fragmented and resource intensive, unable to keep pace or provide the timely, high quality, auditable evidence needed to prioritise investment, verify outcomes, and ensure compliance. This is a challenge shared by councils nationwide.
Addressing this now reduces service disruption and cost of failure (emergency call-outs, long road closures, reputational risk), improves workforce safety by reducing exposure to confined/unstable sites, and strengthens transparency through traceable evidence for Section 19 investigations and asset registers.
This challenge is centred around conducting environmental monitoring of natural (land, sea and water) and council assets to inform Council services of risk and impacts of progressive mitigation and measures to improve the Council’s approach to land management / nature and flood/coastal council asset inspections and management as well as performance manage through evidence data management solutions.
Working with IPEC
What Working with IPEC Can Do
Partnering with IPEC gives you access to tools, insights, and support to drive innovation in procurement:
- Develop challenge statements that empower suppliers to innovate and collaborate
- Ensure processes are inclusive and welcoming to SMEs and startups
- Learn from what we’ve achieved so far—and apply it locally
- Join workshops that build agile, forward-thinking procurement practices
- Embed innovation procurement into your policy and strategy
- Leverage the Competitive Flexible Procurement process to your advantage
- Bake in both trialling and scaling within a single procurement journey
Open call opens
Open call closes
Cohort selection
Programme start & trials
Programme end
Application process
Eligibility
This opportunity is open to local or combined authorities intending to procure and trial innovative solutions related to coastal erosion and environmental monitoring.
Applications close Friday 13th August
If you are a public sector authority with an innovation challenge that you would like to share, get in touch with contact@ipec.org.uk to express interest see how we can help with your challenge.
Please include details of your local or combined authority, job title, the challenge you are aiming to solve, and your preferred trial dates over the next six months (this financial year).
Supporting documents
Read our case study from the IPEC Cohort involving Somerset Council. In 2025, Somerset Council who identified a procurement challenge for asset management and environmental monitoring, as a result IPEC supported them to procure drone technology to monitor coastal erosion and flood resilience.
