Measuring Success in Stormwater Management - A Structured Approach to Monitoring Through Linking Issues and Objectives with Outcomes

Monitoring is an essential function of any planning or operational framework. It generates the information needed to report on performance and progress, demonstrate accountability, and support good decision-making. What gets monitored, how it gets monitored, and the use of the resulting data generally reflects the interests of the parties defining the question that the monitoring programme is intended to answer. When the monitoring of stormwater management is determined solely by stormwater managers then the information derived typically answers only a limited set of questions. In this paper we outline a structured approach to monitoring stormwater management in the context of a statutory plan for the urban development of a sensitive peri-urban catchment in Auckland, New Zealand. This necessitates a broader set of questions aimed at understanding the relationship between land use change and environmental impacts over a long period of time. The approach aims to monitor the effectiveness of the plan by developing logical connections between the issues (enabling of development whilst mitigating storm water runoff and sedimentation), objectives, policies, methods, rules, and intended outcomes determined by an extended public and legal process. The approach will potentially provide the first catchment-scale evaluation of low impact development in New Zealand.