Landcare Research - Manaaki Whenua

Landcare-Research -Manaaki Whenua

More Than Water (MTW) assessment tool

The name ‘More Than Water’ reflects the potential for WSUD to deliver multiple benefits and cost-related advantages, in addition to more familiar considerations associated with management of the hydrological and water quality effects of urban development. MTW provides for the evaluation of a wide set of benefits and costs criteria using a simple qualitative assessment method. The tool generates graphical outputs that can be used to demonstrate how benefit and cost outcomes may vary under different development scenarios.

The tool is available as a Microsoft Excel workbook that can be downloaded here.

A description of the development of MTW, instructions on its use and case study applications are given here. Note that, while most features of the MTW workbook are locked, it is possible to:

  • re-size the worksheet view to fit any screen size; and
  • make multiple copies of the benefits and costs worksheets within the workbook, for instance to allow results for several scenarios to be saved and compared.

Guidance for assessing each of the benefits and costs criteria in MTW is given here.

The Activating WSUD research team welcome feedback and suggestions for improvement on any aspect of the tool, for instance its performance, functionality, appearance and limitations. Please email the team here with any comments.