Evaluation criteria

Evaluation criteria

Share your feedback on the evaluation criteria, so it reflects what you told us was important when it comes to reducing flood risk.

The evaluation criteria will be used to examine the ‘long-list’ of flood mitigation options, helping refine them into a shortlist.

The criteria considers various factors in addition to the ability to reduce flood risk. These include feasibility and cost; social, economic and environmental factors; and features valued by the local community.

Developing the criteria

The evaluation criteria has been developed based on:

community feedback from Phase 1 of the study
learnings from previous flood studies
knowledge of subject matter experts on the project team and their understanding of rivers and catchments – specifically, the Maribyrnong River Catchment.

In Phase 1 of the study, we heard that protecting people’s safety and property were most important to you. We also heard that the community might be willing to tolerate temporary impacts to recreation, if it meant reducing risk to homes or infrastructure.

This feedback and other key insights from Phase 1 have been reflected within the evaluation criteria.

Current evaluation criteria

Criteria	Exclude	Highly unfavourable	Unfavourable	Favourable	Highly favourable
Safety Will this option help slow or reduce floodwaters to reduce the hazard?	May create a serious hazard and/or risk to life	May create a safety hazard and/or minor injury risk	No noticeable safety improvement	Locally improves safety for a small number of people	Significantly improves safety by reducing the depth, speed and/or extent of floodwaters	Not enough information yet
Property Will this option help slow or reduce floodwaters to reduce damage to property?	Some properties experience increased flood damage	Extent of flooding unchanged and no reduction in damage to property	Locally provides a small reduction in flood extent for a small number of properties	Reduces flood extent and flood damages for many properties	Widespread reduction in flood extent, which benefits most properties in the floodplain
Environment and heritage Will this option help to protect or improve local natural areas, parks, cultural sites or places that matter to the community?	Serious and long-lasting damage to the environment, heritage sites, or use of natural spaces	Ongoing moderate, local damage to environmental or heritage values, or the use of natural spaces	Small or local impacts that can be fixed or managed	Helps protect environmental or cultural values and improve natural areas and open spaces	Uses nature-based solutions that reduce flooding and greatly enhance natural areas and open spaces
Value for money Are the benefits expected from this option likely to exceed the cost of implementing it?	Not applicable	Would be very expensive (over $100 million) but wouldn’t reduce flood risk enough to justify the expense	Would be expensive ($10–100 million) and the benefits wouldn’t match the cost, or the benefits are not shared fairly	Would reduce flood damage sufficiently to be worth the cost. Costs and benefits are shared fairly	Would greatly reduce flood damage and clearly be worth the cost. Costs and benefits are shared fairly
Ability to implement Could this option be realistically put in place?	Not constructable on the proposed site	Approval will take years. The community may strongly oppose. Could be built, but would be complicated, expensive and risky	Approval could be challenging. Some people may have concerns. Could be built, but would be moderately complex and risky	Clear approval path. Little community opposition. Could be built using standard methods with no unusual risks	Clear approval path. Would be welcomed by the community. Could be built using standard methods with no unusual risks
Redundancy Is this option still relevant, and does it directly reduce flood risk?	Does not address riverine flooding and/or is a duplicate	Cannot reduce riverine flooding by itself. Could be packaged with another option to enhance the overall benefit		Can be a standalone option – apply the other criteria in this table