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An Integrated Assessment approach to linking biophysical modelling and economic valuation tools

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Abstract

Integrated assessment is rapidly developing in the scientific as well as policy community. Different methods, techniques and procedures (i.e., tools) are used in these assessments. Often, the choice for using certain tools in an assessment is not well founded. This paper presents a framework that scientifically underpins the role of, and thus choice for, tools within an integrated assessment. The framework identifies four phases in an integrated assessment, which are derived from the complementarities between various forms of integrated assessments. Tasks have to be done within each of the four phases. Seven types of tools with similar characteristics are matched to those tasks. The tool framework is a theoretical construct, developed whilst keeping in mind perceptions and suggestions from eventual users. It is a first step in the development of an overarching framework for finding appropriate tools for different tasks in an assessment, and justifying the use of those tools.

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... As recognised earlier, drawing from existing literature, it is clear that the IIA process is composed of six key stages-Screening (Orenstein et al., 2010;Kragt et al., 2010;De Ridder et al., 2007;Bond et al., 2001;Lee, 2006;Hacking and Guthrie, 2008), Scoping (De Ridder et al., 2007;Orenstein et al., 2010;Duncan and Hay, 2007), Impact Analysis (De Ridder et al., 2007;Hisschemoller and Hoppe, 1996;Hacking and Guthrie, 2008), Alternative Selection (Dey, 2006;Persson, 2008;Joao et al., 2011), Monitoring and Evaluation (De Ridder et al., 2007;Lee, 2006;Duncan, 2013;Mishra and Saxena, 2009;Persson, 2008), andFollow-up (De Ridder et al., 2007;Abaza et al, 2004;Joao et al., 2011). Leveraging from this point, the research will now turn to exploring these key stages in more detail. ...
... Quite consistently, the literature has pointed to screening as the stage for identifying and framing the issues to be considered within the assessment (see Kragt et al., 2010;Lee, 2006;De Ridder et al., 2007). The process of issue identification includes setting assessment objectives (Orenstein et al., 2010;Hacking and Guthrie, 2008;Bond et al., 2001), the review of previous appraisals/projects (Orenstein et al., 2010;Bond et al., 2001;Brookes et al., 2001;Duncan and Hay 2007), approaches for issue screening (Lee, 2006;Hacking and Guthrie, 2008;Bond et al., 2001) and tools for undertaking issue screening (Eales et al., 2005;Dodouras and James, 2007). ...
... Little empirical work has been done on systematically integrating stakeholder engagement within the screening stage, including detailing how this may occur. This is despite the fact that stakeholder engagement is considered critical in the process of establishing a "shared understanding about the economic, environmental and social issues of concern" (Kragt The integration of a broader set of stakeholders within the screening stage has been advocated through the use of participatory approaches (Brookes et al., 2001 andKragt et al., 2010). Participatory approaches refer to the method of involving different stakeholders within the IIA. ...
Thesis
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A thesis that provides a comprehensive framework to guide business decision making while embarking on international business. The framework is unique in that it casts a lens on how corporate decision making impacts the triple bottom line of sustainability and advocates for integrated perspective to project assessments. Integrated Impact Assessment from a business perspective seeks to extend knowledge in the field of impact assessment and project appraisal to ensure sustainable development.
... A conceptual influence diagram was developed to define the scale and scope of the system that would be modelled. The multi-disciplinary modelling process [described in more detail in [16,36] involved three workshops with Tasmanian scientists and 31 structured interviews with experts on river health, threatened species, bird ecology, forestry management, riparian vegetation, estuary ecology, and local natural resource managers. This extensive process ensured that the considered variables, and links between variables, matched the scientific and policy context of the system. ...
... Data input for the riparian vegetation network was derived from digital vegetation mapping [47], river health modelling [68], interviews with local NRM officers, agricultural and forestry practitioners and natural scientists [16,69]. Native riparian vegetation was defined as percentage of total riparian zone in the George catchment with intact vegetation, consisting of at least 70% native vegetation ( Table 2). ...
Article
Integrated assessment is rapidly developing in the scientific as well as policy community. Different methods, techniques and procedures (i.e., tools) are used in these assessments. Often, the choice for using certain tools in an assessment is not well founded. This paper presents a framework that scientifically underpins the role of, and thus choice for, tools within an integrated assessment. The framework identifies four phases in an integrated assessment, which are derived from the complementarities between various forms of integrated assessments. Tasks have to be done within each of the four phases. Seven types of tools with similar characteristics are matched to those tasks. The tool framework is a theoretical construct, developed whilst keeping in mind perceptions and suggestions from eventual users. It is a first step in the development of an overarching framework for finding appropriate tools for different tasks in an assessment, and justifying the use of those tools.
... The principles and approaches used to address this need 5 will invariably involve a combination of biophysical, ecological, environmental, economic, social, cultural and political issues, as well as complex decision-related problems. Driven by these issues, an integrated water resource management (IWRM) plan has been proposed to promote coordinated development and water resources management via integrated assessment (Global Water Partnership, 2000;Kragt, 2010;Siew and Doll, 2012). IWRM is internationally accepted as 10 a good scheme for achieving sustainable development in a comprehensive and holistic manner (UNEP, 2012). ...
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Thesis
Changes to land use and land management in Australian catchments have led to pressures on natural resources, and concerns over water quality and ecosystem health in catchment rivers and estuaries. To increase the efficiency of natural resource management (NRM) policies that address these concerns, decision makers require information about the environmental impacts, as well as the marginal costs and benefits associated with policy decisions. Including cost-benefits estimates in NRM policy assessment provides decision makers with economic information about the trade-offs between alternative NRM actions. There are, however, few studies that have assessed the complex environmental and economic trade-offs associated with changes in catchment NRM actions in a single modelling framework. This study uses an integrated assessment (IA) approach to develop a decision support model that incorporates environmental and economic dimensions of catchment NRM, for a case-study of the George catchment in Tasmania. Various (academic and non-academic) stakeholders were consulted during the model development process, to gain an understanding of the wide variety of values that may be impacted by NRM changes. Knowledge from different sources was integrated in a single framework using Bayesian network modelling techniques. The framework incorporates three major sub-models: 1. A physically based water quality model to predict the changes in sediment and nutrient loadings in the George rivers and estuary; 2. Expert opinion and Bayesian network modelling to predict the impacts of catchment NRM changes on three ecosystem attributes: riparian vegetation, rare species and estuary seagrass area; and 3. A choice experiment (CE) survey to estimate the non-market values associated with changes in George catchment ecosystem attributes. The CE study was not only aimed at assessing catchment non-market values, but also addressed methodological challenges associated with attribute level framing and cost anchoring in CE. Rather than coupling existing information and models, synchronous data collection and model development were used to ensure tailored information exchange between the different components. The IA approach to model development highlighted several challenges in synchronizing economic and scientific research. Frequent communication was required between the stakeholders involved in the project to construct a common framework for analysis. The selection of attributes that were relevant for scientists, policy makers, and CE survey respondents was a lengthy process. Agreeing on the level of modelling detail, and predicting attribute levels based on sound scientific information, also posed considerable challenges during the model development process.
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Experts across a wide range of specialist fields including social sciences, informatics, ecology and hydrology are brought together in this truly multidisciplinary approach to water management. They provide the reader with integrated insights into water resource management practices that underpin the three pillars of sustainable development - environment, economics and society - through a series of international case studies and theoretical frameworks. © Carlo Giupponi, Anthony J. Jakeman, Derek Karssenberg, and Matt P. Hare 2006. All rights reserved.
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Economic analyses of nature must somehow define the “environmental commodities” to which values are attached. This paper articulates a set of principles to guide the choice and interpretation of nonmarket commodities. We describe how complex natural systems can be decomposed consistent with what can be called “ecological production theory.” Ecological production theory - like conventional production theory - distinguishes between biophysical inputs, process, and outputs. We argue that a systems approach to the decomposition and presentation of natural commodities can inform and possibly improve the validity of nonmarket environmental valuation studies. We raise concerns about the interpretation, usefulness, and accuracy of benefit estimates derived without reference to ecological production theory.
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1. An Index of Stream Condition (ISC) has been developed to assist broad scale management of waterways by providing an integrated measure of their environmental condition. 2. The ISC provides scores for five components of stream condition: (i) hydrology (based on change in volume and seasonality of flow from natural conditions); (ii) physical form (based on bank stability, bed erosion or aggradation, influence of artificial barriers, and abundance and origin of coarse woody debris); (iii) streamside zone (based on types of plants; spatial extent, width, and intactness of riparian vegetation; regeneration of overstorey species, and condition of wetlands and billabongs); (iv) water quality (based on an assessment of phosphorus, turbidity, electrical conductivity and pH); and (v) aquatic life (based on number of families of macroinvertebrates). 3. The ISC is intended for use by managers at state and regional levels and can be used to report on stream condition, assist with priority setting, judge the long‐term effectiveness of rehabilitation programs and assist with adaptive management. The best available scientific information was used by a multidisciplinary group of scientists and managers to create a stream assessment procedure that can be used routinely by people with limited scientific training. 4. ISC development included trials in four catchments in Victoria, Australia. Over 80 stream reaches were assessed and the results were used to refine the ISC to improve the ease of measurement and ensure that outcomes met the expectations of users. The ISC is now available to be used more widely for reporting on stream condition.
Article
The results from seven choice modelling applications designed to value improved river health in New South Wales are reported. These applications were designed to provide value estimates that could be used, through benefit transfer, to value improvements in the health of other rivers within the state. Because of limitations on the number of rivers that could be valued and populations sampled, a pooled model for use in benefit transfer was also estimated. The results indicate that both use and non‐use values were found to exist for all catchments. In addition, value estimates were found to differ across catchments when populations resident within catchments were sampled. However, when populations resident outside catchments were sampled for two of these catchments, value estimates were found to be statistically similar. This indicates the importance of valuing improved river health in specific catchments by sampling populations within catchments. Yet, it also indicates that it is less critical to conduct multiple surveys of residents outside catchments to value improved river health.
Article
Australian and New Zealand environmental economists have played a significant role in the development of concepts and their application across three fields within their subdiscipline: non-market valuation, institutional economics and bioeconomic modelling. These contributions have been spurred on by debates within and outside the discipline. Much of the controversy has centred on the validity of valuations generated through the application of stated preference methods such as contingent valuation. Suggestions to overcome some shortcomings in the work of environmental economists include the commissioning of a sequence of non-market valuation studies to fill existing gaps to improve the potential for benefit transfer.
Article
We compare two approaches for estimating the distribution of consumers' willingness to pay ("WTP") in discrete choice models. The usual procedure is to estimate the distribution of the utility coefficients and then derive the distribution of "WTP", which is the ratio of coefficients. The alternative is to estimate the distribution of "WTP" directly. We apply both approaches to data on site choice in the Alps. We find that the alternative approach fits the data better, reduces the incidence of exceedingly large estimated "WTP" values, and provides the analyst with greater control in specifying and testing the distribution of "WTP". Copyright Copyright 2008 Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
Article
It is widely accepted that water resource management demands an integrated assessment of resource use options, including local and regional impacts on the environment and stakeholders. Multiple issues, stakeholders and scales of system behaviour must be considered, as well as the key disciplines within and between the human and natural sciences. Modelling is a critical tool in integrated assessment. It enables effects of policy interventions, climate forcing and demographics to be predicted (although with some uncertainty), and provides a means of expanding understanding of river basin behaviour. It also acts as a vehicle for social learning among various interest groups. This paper discusses the various frameworks and methods being used for integrated modelling, and their suitability and unfulfilled potential for these purposes. The frameworks include coupled component models, systems dynamics models, metamodels, risk-assessment approaches, Bayesian decision networks, agent-based methods, expert systems and other heuristic knowledge-based techniques. Specific software platforms are not considered but the lessons from software development and implementation are clearly spelt out. The paper presents three Australian case studies in integrated assessment. They vary in their range of catchment/watershed sizes, hydroclimatology, issues of concern and stakeholders engaged. Two of them utilise a coupled component modelling framework and the third a Bayesian decision network approach. The paper illustrates the value, problems and lessons of integrated assessment and modelling. In particular it proposes some ways to address the challenges of assessing options to obtain more sustainable basin-wide outcomes.
Article
When many good variants are to be valued, like in several forest management programs which differ in the attribute levels, the Contingent Valuation Method may not be a practical option, given the cost and time involved to value each variant separately. There are at least three alternative procedures in such situations. One (i) is to apply an attribute based valuation method like a Choice Experiment (CE); another (ii) is to conduct a CVM and a CE exercise and estimate a joint model; a third one (iii) is to use the CVM estimates to value a base scenario, and then use the CE results to adjust the CVM estimates for any new different scenario. A numerical simulation and an empirical application to an afforestation program in Spain show that the latter is the procedure that yields closer values to the CVM estimations, followed by (ii).
Article
This paper presents the results of the FLUMAGIS project, in which we developed a spatial decision support system (SDSS) to support the implementation of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). The modelling approach is based on the integration of ecological and socio-economic assessment methods, scale-specific and GIS-based data and knowledge modelling and visualization techniques. The project study area is the intensively cropped Upper Ems River Basin in north-western Germany. A method was developed that enables the transfer of scale-specific data and information. Analyses were performed for baseline conditions and specific management and planning scenarios to improve water quantity and quality at micro-, meso- and macro-scale. The results of the study indicate that substantial, expensive water and land management changes at different scales would be necessary to achieve the WFD water quality targets in this basin. Ecological-economic analysis of cost-effectiveness reveals that the costs of achieving certain goals of the WFD can vary more than tenfold depending on which measure is chosen out of the pool of management alternatives. Moreover, the study shows that the differentiation between landscapes and other regional characteristics although considered essential to the successful implementation of WFD measures is very data intensive.
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This paper outlines one component of a study being undertaken to provide a new tool for integrated management of dryland salinity, a major environmental problem in Australia. The Little River Catchment in the upper Macquarie River basin of New South Wales (NSW) is used as a case study. A Bayesian decision network (BDN) approach integrates the various system components — biophysical, social, ecological, and economic. The method of integration of the system components is demonstrated through an example application showing the impacts of various management scenarios on terrestrial and riparian ecology. The ecological impacts of management scenarios are assessed using a probabilistic approach to evaluate ecological criteria which are compared with those for the present situation. In considering different ecological indices, the direction and magnitude of change under different management scenarios varies because of the diverse influence of habitat fragmentation.
Article
Integration has become an important element of natural resource management over recent decades, and managers are now required to consider the social, economic, ecological, and bio-physical effects of alternative management interventions. The problem of managing across many issues is sometimes tackled by putting together a number of individual models. For this approach to work effectively, attention must be paid to both the technical details of the interactions between system components and also to the processes through which these integrated models are developed. This paper explores technical and social aspects of the development of integrated models for environmental management, and discusses two cases within which open modelling and interface prototyping processes were undertaken. The results of this exploration suggest that, for models to be used and accepted widely in integrated environmental management, developers must undertake a process that involves stakeholders and potential users, that exploits the current knowledge, and that illustrates the influence of uncertainty in the technical knowledge. This requires strict attention to the social and technical process of modelling, as well as additional skills in group facilitation and shared vision exploration, so that user expectations can be developed and met in such a way that the best information available is used by decision makers.
Article
This paper illustrates a methodology to create a multi-objective modelling system using Bayesian probability networks to emulate the behaviour of an environmental model that was originally intended for the purpose of analyzing a problem – non-point source pollution in our example. Modelling systems frequently pertain to a single domain (physical or chemical process modelling, hydrology or combinations) to simulate a process in nature such as pollution transport or the production of food or manufactured goods. Economic or other effects are treated separately, or handled in a non-interactive manner. Side-effects of agro-industrial processes, or gains/losses from production enterprises, are generally modelled separately without the ability to examine trade-offs or alternatives. Multi-objective modelling attempts to work in more than one problem domain through decision theoretical principles. Such treatments are designed to couple production and waste systems, to quantify the economic cost of remediation. This model will demonstrate such an application, from the data acquisition, model calibration to the hypothesis testing, for a non-point source pollution model. This will be combined with a simplified net revenue model based on crop rotations typically found in Southern Ontario, Canada, using realistic economic data obtained from agricultural operations similar to those found in this region. We will demonstrate that multi-year analyses are possible with such a system.
Article
Bioeconomic modeling is an increasingly relevant meeting arena for economists and ecologists. A majority of the growing literature, however, is written by economists alone and not with ecologists in true interdisciplinary teamwork. Physical distance between research institutions is no longer a reasonable justification, and I argue that, in practice, neither do the more fundamental philosophical oppositions present any real hindrance to teamwork. I summarize these oppositions in order of increasing magnitude as: 1) the axiom, held by many ecologists, of ‘irreducible complexity of ecosystem functioning’, which is avoided simply because the ecological ‘whole’ (as opposed to its ‘parts’) is not an element of most realistic modeling scenarios; 2) the axiom, also held by many ecologists, of ‘the precautionary principle’, which mainly surfaces at the applied end of natural resource management, and thereby should not prevent economists and ecologists from jointly building the models necessary for the final decision making; and 3) the economists' axiom of ‘the tradability principle’, which is harder to overcome as it demands value-based practical compromises from both parties. Even this may be solved, however, provided the economists accept non-marketable components in the model (e.g. by using restriction terms based on ecology), and the ecologists accept a final model output measured in terms of monetary value. The easiest candidates for interdisciplinary teamwork in bioeconomics are therefore researchers who acknowledge ethical relativism. As bioeconomics presently functions mainly as an arena for economists, I say the responsibility for initiating interdisciplinary teamwork rests most heavily on their shoulders.
Article
Decision Support Tools (DSTs) are designed to assist in making more informed management decisions, through prediction of the outcomes from various future scenarios and as an education resource. The many coastal lakes in New South Wales, Australia are areas where DSTs are able to assist in making management and planning decisions. A variety of economic, ecological and social demands on the lakes and their catchment's finite resources are increasing conflict over their use and sustainable management. The issues are intricately linked, so that understanding trade-offs and making management decisions about coastal lakes and their catchments requires knowledge of the processes and interactions between all key components of the system. This is a complex problem requiring the integration of, often minimal, information, from various disciplines.This paper describes an approach for developing a DST to provide information about the potential impacts of management decisions on key components of a coastal lake system. Integration of the catchment components was completed using a Bayesian Decision Network (BDN). This paper uses a case study of a DST for Merimbula Lake on the east coast of Australia to illustrate the strengths of the BDN approach, and to show how the design of the DST helps to address some of the limitations inherent in the integrative method.
Article
Jakeman et al. (Jakeman, A.J., Letcher, R.A., Norton, J.P., 2006. Ten iterative steps in development and evaluation of environmental models. Environmental Modelling & Software 21, 602–614) outline ten steps in the pursuit of good practice in model development and application to increase the credibility and impact of results from environmental models. This paper shows how the ten steps of model development are relevant to numerical groundwater modelling, using a model of a data-rich coastal groundwater system near Bowen in Queensland, Australia as an example. The model is Geographic Information System-based and estimates the dynamical water balance using Darcy's Law. The method, which is generally applicable to data-rich aquifers, proved cost and time effective and provided important insights to the groundwater dynamics of the area.
Article
A terminology and typology of uncertainty is presented together with a framework for the modelling process, its interaction with the broader water management process and the role of uncertainty at different stages in the modelling processes. Brief reviews have been made of 14 different (partly complementary) methods commonly used in uncertainty assessment and characterisation: data uncertainty engine (DUE), error propagation equations, expert elicitation, extended peer review, inverse modelling (parameter estimation), inverse modelling (predictive uncertainty), Monte Carlo analysis, multiple model simulation, NUSAP, quality assurance, scenario analysis, sensitivity analysis, stakeholder involvement and uncertainty matrix. The applicability of these methods has been mapped according to purpose of application, stage of the modelling process and source and type of uncertainty addressed. It is concluded that uncertainty assessment is not just something to be added after the completion of the modelling work. Instead uncertainty should be seen as a red thread throughout the modelling study starting from the very beginning, where the identification and characterisation of all uncertainty sources should be performed jointly by the modeller, the water manager and the stakeholders.
Article
The interest for wetlands is increasing, not only because of the possibility of a cost-efficient uptake of nutrients, but also because wetlands can be designed to provide other services. What values that are supplied depend largely on the design. There are numerous different design options, and different actors may promote different alternatives. Whether we want to design a wetland for nutrient retention alone, or one that also serves other interests, policy makers need information about the value of different options. Conducting a choice experiment, we are able to identify attributes that increase and decrease citizens perceived value of wetlands. Using a random parameter model we find that biodiversity and walking facilities are the two greatest contributors to welfare, while a fenced waterline and introduction of crayfish decrease welfare.
Article
An attempt is made to develop an integrated model of a watershed to be used as a tool to facilitate debates and consultations between stakeholders and thus to enhance the participatory process. Based on a comprehensive knowledge and expertise of geological, hydrogeological and hydrological features of the catchment basin, as well as on extensive consultation of the stakeholders involved in its water resource management, a conceptual model of the socio-hydrosystem of the middle Hérault valley (100 km2) was proposed. A simulator was then developed using Matlab/Simulink© software to ensure the numerical translation of the conceptual model. This simulator is problem-solving oriented, investigating the hydrosystem responses according to various scenarios, computing groundwater and river flow. Compared to observed data, the first numerical results are convincing regarding the simulated groundwater and river water levels. In that sense, the simulator is seen as a powerful tool to explore cumulative impacts of water-resource management at the catchment scale.
Article
The call for more effective integration of science and decision making is ubiquitous in environmental management. While scientists often complain that their input is ignored by decision makers, the latter have also expressed dissatisfaction that critical information for their decision making is often not readily available or accessible to them, or not presented in a usable form. It has been suggested that scientists need to produce more “usable” information with enhanced credibility, legitimacy, and saliency to ensure the adoption of research results. In basin-scale management of coupled human-water systems, water resources managers, like other decision makers, are frequently confronted with the need to make major decisions in the face of high system complexity and uncertainty. The integration of useful and relevant scientific information is necessary and critical to enable informed decision-making. This paper describes the main aspects of what has been learned in the process of supporting sustainable water resources planning and management in the semi-arid southwestern United States by means of integrated modeling. Our experience indicates that particular attention must be paid to the proper definition of focus questions, explicit conceptual modeling, a suitable modeling strategy, and a formal scenario analysis approach in order to facilitate the development of “usable” scientific information. We believe that these lessons and insights can be useful to other scientific efforts in the broader area of linking environmental science with decision making.
Article
Integrated management is the key to the sustainable development of Europe's water resources. This means that decisions need to be taken in the light of not only environmental considerations, but also their economic, social, and political impacts; it also requires the active participation of stakeholders in the decision making process. The problem is to find a practical way to achieve these aims. One approach is to use Bayesian networks (Bns): networks allow a range of different factors to be linked together, based on probabilistic dependencies, and at the same time provide a framework within which the contributions of stakeholders can be taken into account. A further strength is that Bns explicitly include the element of uncertainty related to any strategy or decision. The links are based on whatever data are available. This may be an extensive data set, output from a model or, in the absence of data, can be based on expert opinion. Networks are being developed for four catchments in Europe as part of the MERIT project; these are in the UK, Denmark, Italy and Spain. In each case stakeholder groups are contributing to the design of the networks that are used as a focus for the consultation process. As an example, the application to water management of a UK basin is discussed.
Article
Many catchments in Australia have experienced increased sediment and nutrient loadings and concomitant declines in water quality and increases in problematic blue–green algal blooms over the past several decades. This paper describes an integrated hydrologic, sediment and nutrient export modelling framework known as catchment-scale management of diffuse sources (CatchMODS). The modelling framework is designed to simulate and assess catchment-scale land and water management activities designed to reduce nutrient and sediment delivery to receiving waters. The Ben Chifley Dam Catchment in New South Wales, Australia is used as a case study for describing the development of the framework. Improving water quality through reduction of sediment and nutrient loads will reduce the probability of algal bloom occurrence in the dam. The innovation of the system is the integration of otherwise separate modelling approaches to enable biophysical and economic assessment of different management options. The outputs from the research are used to improve and focus on-ground remediation, targeted to specific stream reaches or subcatchment areas, as well as to encourage sustainable management practices more broadly in the catchment. With minimal modification, the methods developed are applicable elsewhere to address water quality decline.
Article
Coastal lakes are ecosystems of significant value generating many ecological, social and economic benefits. Increasing demands resulting from urban development and other human activities within coastal lake catchments have the potential to result in their degradation and can lead to conflicts, for example between lake users and upstream communities. There are many techniques that can be used to integrate the variables involved in such conflicts including system dynamics, meta-modelling, and coupled component models, but many of these techniques are too complex for catchment managers to employ on a routine basis. The overall result is the potential to compromise the sustainability of these important ecosystems. This paper describes research to address this problem. It presents the development of an integrated model framework based on a Bayesian network (Bn). Bns are used to assess the sustainability of eight coastal lake-catchment systems, located on the coast of New South Wales (NSW), Australia. The paper describes the potential advantages in the use of Bns and the methods used to develop their frameworks. A case study application for the Cudgen Lake of northern NSW is presented to illustrate the techniques. The case study includes a description of the relevant management issues being considered, the model framework and the techniques used to derive input data. Results for the case study application and their implications for management are presented and discussed. Finally, the directions for future research and a discussion of the applicability of Bn techniques to support management in similar situations are proffered.
Article
Nodal network approaches are a common framework for considering water allocation in river basins. In this type of model framework, a river basin is represented as a series of nodes, where nodes generally represent key points of extraction or instream use. When considering water allocation, agricultural production and other water use decisions generally interact with the stream system in two ways: they can affect the generation of runoff and thus the volume of water reaching the stream; or, they may involve direct extraction or use of water once it has reached the stream. Models are generally required to consider the influence of these decisions on flows and downstream water availability, as well as the influence of flows on the productive, passive use and environmental values of water. This paper provides a generalised conceptual framework for considering these types of interactions and their representation in integrated water allocation models. Applications of this framework to three very different case studies are outlined.
Article
Integrated basin scale analysis that accurately accounts for the impacts of proposed policies on the environment and society's economic welfare can comprehensively and consistently inform water resource policies. Cost benefit analysis (CBA) has considerable potential to support water decisions by consistently appraising proposals in terms of society's total environmental and economic impact in monetary terms. However, the difficulty of correctly applying CBA to environmental programs with complex physical and economic interactions weakens policymakers’ confidence in comprehensive economic assessments at the basin scale. This paper describes and illustrates a method by which costs and benefits can be systematically integrated into an integrated physical, institutional and economic analysis for a river basin. A simple hydroeconomic model is presented. Its size is small enough to build, understand, and interpret with paper and pencil. But its structure is sufficiently flexible to permit expansion for comprehensive policy design that rests on a foundation of a basin's hydrology, institutional constraints, and economic relations. The use of cost benefit analysis to support environmental policy will always be limited by ethical questions on the distribution of benefits and costs among sectors, income groups, locations, and generations. Nevertheless, hydroeconomic models offer a potential resource to efficiently and consistently integrate hydrologic, economic, and institutional impacts of policy proposals to support basin scale cost-benefit environmental assessments.
Article
There is growing support for the use of integrated assessments (IAs)/sustainability impact assessments (SIAs), at different government levels and geographic scales of policy-making and planning, both nationally and internationally. However, delivering good quality IAs/SIAs, in the near future, could be challenging. This paper mainly focuses upon one area of concern, differences between research and other technical contributions intended to strengthen assessment methodologies and the types of assessment methods considered usable by practitioners. To help in addressing this concern, the development of a common assessment framework is proposed, which is based on a shared, practitioner–researcher–stakeholder understanding of what constitutes a satisfactory integrated/sustainability impact assessment. The paper outlines a possible structure for this framework, which contains three interconnected elements—the planning context in which the assessment is to be carried out; the process by which the assessment is to be undertaken and its findings used; and the methods, technical and consultative, by which impacts are to be assessed. It concludes with suggested ‘next steps’, addressed to researchers, practitioners and other stakeholders, by which the assessment framework might be tested and improved, and its subsequent use supported.