The DESSIN ESS Evaluation Framework

Event: Digital Event
Date: 15 September 2016
Location: Berlin, Germany
Speaker: Gerardo Anzaldúa

Nadine Gerner (Emscher Genossenschaft)

The framework and a practical example of its application were presented by Gerardo Anzaldua (Ecologic Institute), who led the working group developing the framework, and Nadine Gerner (Emschergenossenschaft), who led the application of the framework on three case study sites in a webinar on 15. September. The webinar includes an ample Q&A session with an extended group of members from the framework development team and lasted over an hour. You also can download the Power Point presentation that was used for the webinar.

Large-scale River Restoration Pays Off

A case study of ecosystem servicevaluation for the Emscher restoration generation project

Year 2018

Publication:Article

Ecologic Institute contributed to a practical guide for local-level evaluations of changes in ecosystem services. The approach helps to associate such changes to specific water management measures and enables both monetization and qualitative appraisal of impacts. Possible links between WFD State parameters and specific ESS classes are proposed. The article is available for download.

Getting into the Water with the Ecosystem Services Approach

The DESSIN ESS evaluation framework

Year 2018

Publication:Report

The DESSIN Ecosystem Services Evaluation Framework is a methodology used to systematically assess the impacts of innovative solutions to water-related challenges from the environmental, economic and social perspectives. The framework consists of the DESSIN Cookbook, a Companion Document, a Supplementary Material File and a Case Reporting Template. The framework is aimed at decision-makers, practitioners and technology developers who want to evaluate the potential impacts of new technologies and water management measures on freshwater ecosystems and their services. The documents are available for download.

Framework for Evaluating Changes in Ecosystem Services

Year 2016

Publication:Report

The overall goal of the DESSIN ESS software system is to support users implementing the DESSIN ESS evaluation framework and sustainability assessment. This document describes how the software should do this, from the end-user perspective. The document is organized into so-called "user stories". Each user story describes a task that a user would like the software to perform, and explains why performing the task provides value to the user. The users stories are organized into "epics", which are groups of similar stories. Most of the user stories are written from the perspective of an evaluation lead carrying out an ESS assessment, as this was thought to be the most likely user of the system. The software framework presented here was developed by DHI, ECOLOGIC, SINTEF, and IWW in collaboration with the DESSIN user group, which consists of the demo site representatives who will be the end users of the software.

System Requirement Specification and System Design Documents

Requirement elicitation and system design (Deliverable 23.1, DESSIN)

Year 2016

Publication:Article

Innovative ways to manage the urban water cycle are required to deal with an ageing drinking and waste water infrastructure and new societal imperatives. This paper examines the influence of water governance in enabling transformations and technological innovation uptake in urban water management. A governance assessment framework is developed and applied in three case-studies, examining different scales and types of innovations used to tackle challenges in European urban water management. The methodology combines documentary analysis and interviews to reconstruct historical storylines of the shift in the water governance of urban water management for each site. The research provides detailed empirical observations on the factors conducive to innovation uptake at the local level. Critical governance factors such as commitment to compromise, the necessity to build political support, and the role of "entrepreneurs" and coalitions are highlighted. The paper also explores the role of discursive strategies and partnership design, as well as that of regulative, economic and communicative instruments, in creating barriers and opportunities to initiate and secure change. A number of recommendations targeted at innovators and water managers are presented in the conclusion.

Governance Regime Factors Conducive to Innovation Uptake in Urban Water Management

Experiences from Europe

Year 2016

Publication:Policy Brief

Within the European water research project "Demonstrate Ecosystem Services Enabling Innovation in the Water Sector (DESSIN)" a policy brief on governance factors conducive to innovation in the urban water sector was published. Rodrigo Vidaurre and Josselin Rouillard from Ecologic Institute, provide five key recommendations on the types of incentives and stakeholder management strategies that can be employed to encourage innovation uptake in urban water management. The policy brief is targeted to technology companies and innovators and available for download.

Increasing Chances of Innovation Uptake Through Governance

A guide for technology companies and water utilities

Year 2015

Publication:Policy Brief

Within the European water research project "Demonstrate Ecosystem Services Enabling Innovation in the Water Sector (DESSIN)," a policy brief on governance factors conducive to innovation in the urban water sector was published. Josselin Rouillard and Rodrigo Vidaurre from Ecologic Institute, provide five key recommendations on policy frameworks, incentives and stakeholder management strategies that can be employed to encourage innovation uptake in urban water management. The policy brief is targeted to water managers and policy makers and is available for download.

Designing Governance and Financing Regimes to Encourage Innovation Uptake

A guide for water managers and policy makers

Year 2015

Publication:Report

This document provides a state-of-the-art review to support the conceptual and practical development of the DESSIN ESS Evaluation Framework. It briefly presents the state of affairs regarding the measurement of changes in ESS, including description of existing classification systems, analytical frameworks and economic valuation methodologies. The challenges associated with spatial and temporal variations of ESS are considered and an approach to define and measure sustainability is presented. Finally, the next steps in the work plan of Work Area 1 are outlined.

Water Status Related Changes in ESS, Economic Valuation and Sustainability Assessment of ESS

Internal state of the art report on ecosystem services evaluation (Deliverable 11.1, DESSIN)

Year 2014

Publication:Report

This Deliverable reports the results of the assessment of governance factors conducive to innovation uptake carried within the context of the FP7 DESSIN project. The research is based on the analysis of innovation uptake in the three DESSIN mature case-study sites (i.e. Aarhus, Emscher, Ebro) which had welcomed some successful transformation in urban water management. A number of recommendations are presented in the conclusion to inspire future "entrepreneurs" in promoting innovation uptake in urban water management. The report is available for download.

Governance Regime Factors Conducive to Innovation Uptake in Urban Water Management

Deliverable 12.1, DESSIN

Year 2015

Funding: European Commission, Directorate-General Research & Innovation (DG Research & Innovation), International
Organizer: Ecologic Institute, Germany
Speaker: Gerardo Anzaldúa

Nadine Gerner (Emscher Genossenschaft)
Date: 15 September 2016
Location: Berlin, Germany
Language: English
Project: Demonstrate Ecosystem Services Enabling Innovation in the Water Sector (DESSIN)
Project ID: 2731
Keywords: Cities

EU

Water

Education

Digitalization

Events

Water Framework Directive, WFD, water economics, water management, water utility, water utilities, water governance, industry, water supply and sanitation, water services, end-user, monitoring, economic policy instruments, economic assessment, water quality, water scarcity, ecosystem services, ESS, innovation, innovation uptake, demonstration sites, CSO, local treatment, high-rate filtration, RTC of large-scale systems, ASR, MAR, sewer mining, urban

Europe, Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Greece, Spain

Further Links

PublicationPolicy BriefDesigning Governance and Financing Regimes to Encourage Innovation Uptake

Rouillard, Josselin; Vidaurre, Rodrigo: Designing governance and financing regimes to encourage innovation uptake. A guide for water managers and policy makers. DESSIN policy brief 1. October 2015.

PublicationPolicy BriefIncreasing Chances of Innovation Uptake Through Governance

Vidaurre Rodrigo and Rouillard Josselin: Increasing chances of innovation uptake through governance. A guide for technology companies and water utilities. DESSIN policy brief 2. October 2015.

PublicationArticleGovernance Regime Factors Conducive to Innovation Uptake in Urban Water Management

Rouillard, Josselin; Vidaurre, Rodrigo; Brouwer, Stijn; Damman, Sigrid; Ponce, Alberto A.; Gerner, Nadine V.; Riegels, Niels; Termes, Montserrat. 2016. "Governance Regime Factors Conducive to Innovation Uptake in Urban Water Management: Experiences from Europe." Water 8, no. 10: 477.

Dessin project website