Spatial and temporal representation of environmental policy outcomes using geocomputation: a case study in Victoria, Australia

Abstract

For more than 30 years, cost-benefit analysis (CBA) has been used in many countriesas an important tool for evaluating public policies. In most cases CBA uses Kaldor-Hicks theory, which assumes that all the entities in the analysis should be consideredequal when distributing benefits and costs. However, for environmental policyevaluations, and especially for cases where a policy is directly affecting a communityor ecosystem with a high degree of vulnerability, the Kaldor-Hicks theory may not bein concordance with principals of equity and sustainability. In order to incorporatethese two concepts in the Cost-Benefit Analysis, a new approach to presentation ofenvironmental indicators for decision-making is proposed. The use of spatio-temporalenvironmental and social indicators provides the decision-maker with a broaderpicture of positive and negative impacts of the policy by considering entities in theanalysis in a differential form, according to their location in the space-time. A geocomputational(GC) system, which incorporates a space-time model and a geographicinformation system (GIS), was created and designed to generate new representationsof environmental policy outcomes. The system, which could be considered as adecision support system, has been designed to promote discussion in the decisionprocess rather than as a technocratic tool. The indicators and computer-based systemhave been tested in a water resources case study with long-term impacts over a largearea of south-eastern Australia.