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Triple-Bottom-Line Assessment of Stormwater Projects that Aim to Improve Waterway Health

The purpose of this research work was to develop practical tools that Australian stormwater managers can use to assess the financial, social and ecological ‘pros and cons’ of options to manage stormwater. For example, such tools may be used to help choose a design of a stormwater treatment and re-use system or the location of new infrastructure.

• Undertaking a review of relevant case studies and literature.
• Consulting with stakeholders on the most practical approach.
• Developing draft triple-bottom-line (TBL) assessment guidelines titled “Guidelines for Evaluating the Financial, Ecological and Social Aspects of Urban Stormwater Management Measures to Improve Waterway Health” (Taylor, 2005).
• Trialling the guidelines on a project in Brisbane that examined alternative stormwater treatment and re-use measures in typical greenfield residential estates.
• Finalising the guidelines.
• Developing, in parallel with the TBL assessment guidelines, a new life-cycle costing module in the MUSIC model (i.e. the ‘Model for Urban Stormwater Improvement Conceptualisation’: see www.toolkit.net.au/music).This module allows users to estimate likely cost elements and the overall life cycle cost of common structural stormwater measures to improve waterway health. This module was developed following an analysis of the cost of Australian measures, and the development of algorithms that relate the size of measures to their cost elements.

Research Team
André Taylor, Tim Fletcher

Industry Partners
Victorian EPA, Brisbane City Council, Melbourne Water

• Taylor, A. (2005). Guidelines for Evaluating the Financial, Ecological and Social Aspects of Urban Stormwater Management Measures to Improve Waterway Health. CRC for Catchment Hydrology, Melbourne.(3358Kb) (If you are unable to download this file, please right click with your mouse and save the file to your hard drive).
• Taylor, A. and Fletcher, T. (2005).Triple-Bottom-Line Assessment of Urban Stormwater Projects. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Urban Drainage, Copenhagen, Denmark, 21-26 August 2005. (116Kb) (If you are unable to download this file, please right click with your mouse and save the file to your hard drive).
• Taylor, A. (2005). Practical Application of Triple-Bottom-Line Assessment Techniques to Proposed Stormwater Infrastructure. AWA’s Ozwater Convention and Exhibition, 8-12 May 2005, Brisbane, Queensland.
• Taylor, A. and Fletcher, T. (2005).Triple-Bottom-Line Assessment of Proposed Urban Stormwater Measures to Improve Waterway Health. Paper Presented at the 29th Hydrology and Water Resources Symposium, 21 - 23 February, 2005, Engineers Australia, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.
• Taylor, A. (2005). Structural Stormwater Quality Best Management Practice Cost - Size Relationship Information from the Literature. Technical Paper (version 3). Cooperative Research Centre for Catchment Hydrology, Melbourne.
• Taylor, A. and Fletcher, T. (2004). Estimating Life-Cycle Costs of Structural Measures That Improve Urban Stormwater Quality. WSUD 2004 conference, 22 - 23 November 2004, Adelaide, South Australia.
• Taylor, A. (2003). An Introduction to Life-cycle Costing Involving Structural Stormwater Quality Management Measures. Technical Paper. Cooperative Research Centre for Catchment Hydrology, Melbourne.

• Taylor, A. (2005). Triple-Bottom-Line Assessment of Alternative Stormwater Treatment Designs in Residential Areas of South East Queensland. Presented to the Stormwater Industry Association, Brisbane, July 2005.(1767Kb) (If you are unable to download this file, please right click with your mouse and save the file to your hard drive).
• Taylor, A. and Fletcher, T. (2004). Estimating Life-Cycle Costs of Structural Measures That Improve Urban Stormwater Quality. Presentation at the WSUD 2004 conference, 22 - 23 November 2004, Adelaide, South Australia. (236Kb) (If you are unable to download this file, please right click with your mouse and save the file to your hard drive).

This project is now complete. The life-cycle costing module in version 3 of MUSIC has been released (May 2005) and training has been undertaken in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney.The TBL assessment guidelines have also been finalised.

The TBL assessment guidelines explain how to use a multi criteria analysis procedure as a decision support tool. Users will also need to make reference to other sources of information when using the procedure (e.g. expert opinion, local stakeholder opinion, outputs from pollutant export models such as MUSIC, relevant ecological objectives for stormwater management, relevant environmental valuation studies, etc.). Guidance on key sources of information and appropriate stakeholder participation techniques have been built into the assessment guidelines.

These guidelines also contain condensed information from the literature on a wide variety of costs and benefits that may result from stormwater projects (i.e. externalities) to help stormwater managers make decisions during the assessment process. This is needed as high-quality, local benefit-cost data on social, ecological or water infrastructure-related externalities is often not available and/or not practical to collect given the resources typically available to stormwater managers (e.g. time and money).

Note that the guidelines are flexible enough to be used on structural and non-structural projects. They also allow users to choose one of three levels of assessment which are commensurate with the scale, complexity and potential impact of the project. This approach has been taken to allow stormwater managers to find an appropriate balance between the degree of rigour undertaken in the assessment and the resources needed to undertake the assessment.

These guidelines, supported by the new life cycle costing module in MUSIC should substantially assist urban stormwater managers to make more structured, informed, rigorous, participatory, transparent, defendable, socially acceptable, ecologically sustainable and more cost-effective decisions.