ASSESS-HKH is an association of Asian and European scientists from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Austria (project coordinator: Otto Moog, BOKU), Czech Republic and Germany. The target of ASSESS-HKH is the development and establishment of easily applicable tools for an ecological river assessment system with aquatic macroinvertebrates. ASSESS-HKH is funded by the European Union (Contract number: INCO CT 2005 003659) and has a duration from April 2005 to April 2008. In a first step a rough stream typology was developed for the region. Organic pollution was detected as main stressor and therefore chosen for further investigation. A prior developed pre-classification scheme was used to assign candidate sites to five different pressure gradients ranging from reference status to bad status. A standardized sampling procedure (Multi-Habitat-Sampling, Aqem 2002) was applied to all sampling sites. In addition a substrate specific sampling was applied to gain ecological information about the aquatic macroinvertebrates. A comprehensive site protocol recorded abiotic attributes, and impairments at the catchment, reach and site scale. Altogether 390 samples were taken in two sampling periods. At present all animals have been identified and all available data has been entered in the HKH dip software.