In conducting these benefit-cost assessments, the focus should be on final environmental “outcomes” (e.g. expected or actual improvements of water risks) and on the impacts of these outcomes (e.g. in terms of changes in health conditions) - rather than on intermediate “outputs” (e.g. the sharing of water volumes among stakeholders). The idea is to quantify how much the public-at-large value changes in water security. This quantification can facilitate analysis and policy-making in situations where some water impacts pull in opposite directions (e.g. risk-risk trade-offs), it can also make it possible to compare the (private) costs and (public) benefits of a given target for water risk.