3.1.2 Scope and context

The objective of the Bioregional Assessment Programme is to understand and predict regional-scale cumulative impacts on water resources and water-dependent assets caused by coal resource developments in Australia's major coal-bearing sedimentary basins. The assessments identify areas where water resources and water-dependent assets are very unlikely to be impacted (less than 5% chance), or are potentially impacted. Governments, industry and the community can then focus on areas that are potentially impacted when making regulatory, water management and planning decisions.

The impact and risk analysis considered only biophysical consequences, such as changes in hydrology or ecology; fully evaluating consequences requires value judgments and non-scientific information that is beyond the scope of BAs. A full risk assessment (with risk evaluation and risk treatment) was not conducted as part of BAs.

The purpose of this section is to highlight the design choices that have steered the direction of this Assessment and culminated in the impact and risk analysis. The following six themes are covered:

Further details about the design choices are provided in companion submethodology M10 (as listed in Table 1) for analysing impacts and risks (Henderson et al., 2017).