THE VALUE OF STREAMFLOW DATA FOR STORAGE DESIGN

It has long been assumed that the benefits of collecting streamflow da ta are greater than the costs of collection. However, factual informat ion on the benefits of data collection programs are not available. To assess the value of one aspect of data use, the reduction in uncertain ty of design storage size and the associated capital cost was determin ed for a range of lengths of available data. The results were applied to the 500 station data collection network in New South Wales, Austral ia to show that for this single use of data the benefits greatly excee d the cost of collection.