Once the values of stakeholders are understood, the next task is to gather data and develop metrics to best reflect them in evaluations of hydropower development options. Metrics should be seen by stakeholders as representative of their interests. Ultimately, data availability and analytical methods will determine how directly and accurately those interests can be presented.

In some cases, a stakeholder value may correspond directly to available data that can be expressed as a single quantitative metric (e.g., energy production, or inundation and loss of agricultural lands from reservoirs), whereas others may require compound, modelled or proxy metrics. For example, an objective may be to maintain fisheries productivity, and the analytical team may use a proxy metric that is directly related to fish reproduction such as seasonal extent of floodplain inundation. Alternatively, a model that incorporates multiple inputs may be generated to produce a metric that estimates potential changes that are more directly related to fisheries productivity, depending on knowledge, data availability and programming capacity. Guided by stakeholder values, the technical team will collect and evaluate data, and select analytical approaches that best support generating metrics that reflect stakeholder interests in a meaningful and clear way.

Users will find best practices and case studies, like this one, to help them understand how to translate interests and objectives into metrics, where to find data to support analyses of their metrics and how to organize their data in a way that is conducive to the analyses.

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