DMA

The double materiality assessment (DMA) decides which sustainability topics are material for your company. A topic is material if your company has a significant impact on people or the environment (impact materiality), or if it creates financial risks or opportunities for your company (financial materiality).

The DMA is only available in projects whose reporting flow includes it.

Assess a sub-topic

Open your project’s DMA. The sidebar lists each sustainability sub-topic. For each one:

1. Decide whether it’s relevant. If it isn’t, mark it as not relevant and give a reason.
2. Add the impacts, and the risks and opportunities, that apply.
3. Score each one using the scales shown. Palau works out whether it’s material and shows it on the matrix.
4. Optionally, add stakeholders, organisational units and supporting files.

The sidebar flags sub-topics that still need attention: ones with nothing added, ones with unfinished scores, and ones marked not relevant without a reason.

Change the scoring settings

DMA settings control the scales and thresholds for the whole project. When you change them, you choose what happens to existing scores:

• Reassess all: recalculates every score against the new thresholds.
• Clear all assessments: resets the scores. Use this when you change the number of points on a scale.

Review the results

The results page has two tabs:

• IROs: every impact, risk and opportunity, with its outcome
• Disclosure requirements: each ESRS sub-topic and whether it’s material

You can export the results to Excel.

Apply the results to your report

Applying the results marks the report’s topics as material or not material, based on your DMA.

Before you can apply them, every sub-topic needs at least one impact, risk or opportunity, or must be marked not relevant with a reason. Every score must also be complete.

Caution

Applying DMA results can’t be undone. It overwrites any materiality you set manually in the report.