Water Sensitive Design Assessment Tool - A Method to Attain Sustainable Development

A new design tool has been developed that allows land developers to test proposed development form against principles of Water Sensitive Design (WSD). The new tool, called the ‘WSD Assessment Tool’, achieves sustainable development by enabling the development team to best practicably synthesize WSD principles for a proposed development.

The tool requires the user to enter a number of quantitative and qualitative attributes of the predevelopment and proposed development scenarios. The user can then test the proposed development against up to seven available site objectives. Site objectives have been derived in association with the latest WSD principles developed for Auckland Council’s forthcoming Guideline Document 04. Outcomes from the tool are as ‘Blue Stars’ which indicate the degree of WSD inclusion and as output statements to the user. These statements detail the extent which the proposed development scenario achieves the queried site objective. If the proposed development does not achieve the site objective (less than three blue stars), the tool provides advice on how the proposed development may be improved.

This paper discusses the development of the WSD Assessment Tool. Information is also provided on the mechanics of how the tool operates, and how outcomes produced from the tool can be interpreted to enable improved inclusion of WSD principles within development form.