in conducting these benefitcost assessments the focus should be on final environmental outcomes eg expected or actual improvements of water risks and on the impacts of these outcomes eg in terms of changes in health conditions rather than on intermediate outputs eg the sharing of water volumes among stakeholders the idea is to quantify how much the publicatlarge value changes in water security this quantification can facilitate analysis and policymaking in situations where some water impacts pull in opposite directions eg riskrisk tradeoffs it can also make it possible to compare the private costs and public benefits of a given target for water risk