How to use EVRI

Welcome to the EVRI website! 

The Environmental Valuation Reference Inventory (EVRI) is a searchable compendium of summaries of environmental and health valuation studies. These summaries provide detailed information about the study location, the specific environmental assets being valued, the methodological approaches and the estimated monetary values along with proper contextualization. The EVRI database now contains over 4,000 summaries of valuation studies and information from new studies is being added on an ongoing basis.
 
The information in the EVRI is available to subscribers. If you wish to register to EVRI, follow instructions in the “How to Create an Account” section below. Additional help on how to navigate the website and search for studies is provided below. A more comprehensive EVRI User Manual is also available for download, in English and French.

How to create an account

  1. From the Home page click on “Register” on the lower right menu bar under Register to become a member.
  2. You will be asked to fill out your information.
  3. On the Captcha field, check the box to confirm that you are a human visitor. This is in place to reduce unwanted machine interference.
  4. After you complete the form correctly, click on “Create new Account”.
  5. You will be redirected to the home page and the following message will appear in the green interactive bar: A welcome message with further instructions has been send to your email address.
  6. Go to your email and follow the link to create your new password.
  7. Create your new password and submit / save your changes. You will automatically be registered as a General User.
 
Note: The system-generated password sent to your email is only valid for 24 hours.

General User

A General User can perform the following functions:
 
  • Search for study summaries based on their content and metadata
  • Export search results
  • Save search criteria for future consultation
  • View study summary details
  • Contribute a study summary to be considered for inclusion in the Infobase
  • Comment on existing study summaries (from the “Report” button on the study summary details page under the “Source” information block).

How to search for study summaries

After you logged in to your account, you will be able to search the EVRI Infobase. There are three different ways to search the EVRI Infobase:
 
  1. From the Home Page, click directly on the green “Search” button (do not enter any text in the search box), and you will be taken to the Search Page. It will by default show results for all published summaries. You can then use the facet filters on the right menu bar to further refine your search. See details below.
  2. From the Home Page, in the top right Search Website field, you can type a word and click on the magnifying glass to execute the search on that word. You will be taken to the Search Page where the results of your search will be displayed.
  3. From the Search Studies menu bar on the right, under Search by Keyword(s), you can type a word and click on the green Search button to execute the search.  You can also select sub-sets from the 3 drop-down lists to refine your search: Study Type, Region, and Environmental Assets. You will be taken to the Search Page, where the results of your search will be displayed.
 
After you execute your search, you will be taken to the Search Page displaying the search results. Once on the Search Page, there are additional options available.

How to use the search page

From the Search Page, you can do the following:
  • Further refine your search using filters on the right side of the page
  • Export the results of your search to a CSV or XLSX format
  • Use the check box beside each study to indicate which study summaries will be exported
  • Save a search criteria for future use
  • Re-run a saved search criteria

How to use search facets and filters

Search facets enable you to easily refine your search by selecting one or more facet(s). As you refine your search, the number of study summaries in each facet options changes to reflect an actual count of the study summaries with that metadata. The available search facets are presented below.
 
You can filter your search results based on the following parameters:
 
Publication Date: This filter offers date ranges to narrow your search to studies to the last year, last 5 years or last 10 years.
 
Document type: This filter includes sub-filters to describe the original format of the study, e.g. whether published as a journal, government/non-government report, working paper, conference paper, dissertation/thesis, chapter in book, magazine, or book.
 
Region: This filter describes the region(s) and specific country(ies) the study is addressing (which may differ from where the study was authored), e.g. Africa, Asia, Caribbean, Central America, Europe, North America, Oceania, or South America.
 
Environmental assets: This filter describes the general type of environmental asset that is being valued in the study, e.g. air, animals, human health, land, man-made environment/infrastructure, micro-organisms, plants, or water.
 
Type of Value/Usage: Based on the Total Economic Value framework and an anthropocentric perspective, this filter provides information on the general type of values reported in the study, and whether a human health impacts were valued, e.g. built environment, ecological functions (indirect uses), extractive uses, human health, non-extractive uses, or passive uses.
 
Study type: This filter describes the general methodological approach of the study, whether it was primary valuation, secondary valuation (benefits transfer), or meta/synthesis analysis.
 
Valuation techniques: This filter describes the general type of monetary valuation methodology used in the study, whether based on actual market pricing, revealed preference, or stated preference.
 
Economic measures: This filter describes the specific type of monetary valuation instrument used in the study, e.g. compensating surplus, compensating variation, consumer surplus, cost of injury/replacement, equivalent surplus, equivalent variation, price, willingness to accept, or willingness to pay.
 
After you have filtered your search using the filters above, you have the option to either save your search result or export/download your search results.

How to export/download search results

After you filter your search results, select one or more study summary(ies) that you wish to export. 
You can download files in either CSV or XLSX formats.
  • The XLSX Export will prepare the file in a spreadsheet format.
  • The CSV Export will prepare the file in a comma-delimited format.  
 
More details are provided in the EVRI User Manual: