Across Australia, governments and land managers are seeking to maximise the benefits of green open spaces. The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) sought to further understand the economic value of investing in natural capital in open space particularly through improvements in accessibility, re-naturalisation and aesthetic values.

Alluvium, Mosaic Insights and Natural Capital economics came together to provide technical, social science and economic expertise in analysing the value of open space. This multidisciplinary team was used to spatially map the open space of a single local government area, establish its value given available data and literature, and identify key knowledge gaps.

This framework will be applied to the entirety of metropolitan Melbourne, with a scope that includes identifying how the available open space data can be improved through surveying and other investigations.