UNITED Assessment Framework to Determine Economic Feasibility of Multi-Use Platforms

Impact assessments are crucial in order to evaluate the likelihood of commercial interest in MUCLs The combination of offshore platforms with joint uses eg aquaculture tourism etc will undoubtedly be associated with higher costs and risks to platform owners As such this task aims to develop an assessment framework to guide the economic evaluation of the added value of MultiUse Platforms in Europe The framework will be structured to assess the financial costs and revenues of MUCLs and their efficiency value for money This assessment will also consider broader economic impacts that are difficult to capture in monetary terms ie changes in local employment levels changes in ecosystem services and functions The assessment framework will review applications of standard decisionmaking practices eg CostBenefit Analysis CostEffectiveness Analysis and MultiCriteria Analysis to determine the best approach to use within the UNITED project The assessment framework will provide guidelines on the identification of cost types in addition to guidance on the collection of relevant cost data and methods for their estimation if not available eg transferred from other sites and determine appropriate valuation techniques and available values or benefits functions to estimate benefits information on the economic efficiency of the responses This task will produce a deliverable D32 on the UNITED Assessment Framework to Determine Economic Feasibility of MultiUse Platforms