Community Member

Responding to stakeholders – lessons learnt

September 11, 2024April 28, 2016

By Klaus Hubacek and Christina Prell

authors_klaus-hubacek_christina-prell — 1. Klaus Hubacek (biography)
2. Christina Prell (biography)

Being responsive to stakeholder interests and suggestions is important for successful participatory modeling. We share lessons from an exciting, five year project in the UK entitled the ‘Sustainable Uplands’. The project sought to bring together a variety of groups ranging from academics, policy makers, residents, conservationists, and different ‘end user’ groups that all, in some way, held a stake in upland park areas in the UK.

Our process was iterative, tacking back and forth between field work, consultations among the research team, consultations with non-academic stakeholders, and modeling. Not only were our models heavily influenced by what stakeholders told us were important values and considerations regarding upland areas, but these also informed how we went about gathering the data.

Designing applied research for impact

December 30, 2021April 26, 2016

By Andrew Campbell

How can we get the three critical groups in transdisciplinary research—researchers, end users of research, and funders of research—to work together in designing applied research for impact? As Roux and colleagues (2010) pointed out:

“A key characteristic of transdisciplinary research is that the domains of science, management, planning, policy and practice are interactively involved in issue framing, knowledge production and knowledge application.”

A critical challenge is that each of the three groups is likely to have different perspectives on the goals of a given research project or program and how to achieve them, and therefore likely to define success differently.

Modeling as empowerment

August 24, 2022April 21, 2016

By Laura Schmitt Olabisi

Who can make systems change? The challenges of complexity are intensely felt by those who are trying to make strategic interventions in coupled human-environmental systems in order to fulfill personal, societal, or institutional goals. The activists, leaders, and decision-makers I work with often feel overwhelmed by trying to deal with multiple problems at once, with limited time, resources, and attention. We need tools to help leaders cut through the complexity so that they can identify the most effective strategies to make change.

This is where participatory system dynamics modelers like myself come in.

Transdisciplinarity: Learning together to teach together

December 11, 2024April 19, 2016

By BinBin Pearce, Carolina Adler and Christian Pohl

authors_binbin-pearce_carolina-adler_christian-pohl — 1. BinBin Pearce (biography)
2. Carolina Adler (biography)
3. Christian Pohl (biography)

Are there innovative methods that enable students to frame and confront the complexity of real-world problems in the context of sustainable development? Which learning approaches help students engage with design thinking to understand a particular system, and also to start thinking about responsible solutions? Which approaches enable students to reflect on their own actions, as well as become aware of the importance of diverse stakeholder perspectives and how these play out in real-world contexts?

Should water scientists be advocates?

August 24, 2022April 14, 2016

By Patricia Gober

Efforts to improve the use of models to support policy and practice on water resources issues have increased awareness of the role of advocacy and public engagement in the modeling process. Hydrologists have much to learn from the recent experience of climate scientists who have discovered that scientific knowledge is not independent of the political context in which it is used but rather is co-produced by scientists and society.

Despite a strong consensus among climate scientists in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal,” approximately one-third of the USA’s population still does not believe that global temperatures have risen over the past 100 years and does not trust the things that scientists say about the environment.

Looking over the horizon for team effectiveness

April 9, 2026April 12, 2016

By Stephen M. Fiore

How can we better understand how to improve team effectiveness, as well as help society more broadly? In the last decade, there has been a great deal of growth of interdisciplinary research on teams, thanks to organizations like the Interdisciplinary Network for Group Research and the developing field of the Science of Team Science [Moderator update – In April 2026, the original embedded link for ‘Science of Team Science’ was no longer functional and so we have removed the active link (this was the structure: scienceofteamscience.org/) and provide a link here to an equivalent group; the International Network for the Science of Team Science at: https://inscits.org/].

New areas

The study of teams has long been making important contributions to business organizations, the military, and healthcare and is now branching out to scientific research teams, cyber security teams, and even spaceflight teams. Each of these domains is of significant societal relevance for the 21st century. They represent important topics for what is called use-inspired basic science.

La modélisation participative, un lieu privilégié pour l’interdisciplinarité? / Participatory modeling: An ideal place for interdisciplinarity?

September 5, 2024April 7, 2016

By Pierre Bommel

An English version of this post is available

La modélisation participative cherche à impliquer un groupe de personnes dans la conception et la révision d’un modèle. L’objectif à terme consiste à mieux caractériser les problèmes actuels et imaginer collectivement comment tenter de les résoudre. Dans le domaine de l’environnement en particulier, il apparaît nécessaire que les acteurs concernés se sentent impliqués dans la démarche de modélisation, afin qu’ils puissent exprimer leurs propres points de vue, mais aussi pour mieux s’engager dans des décisions collectives. De ce fait, pour aborder la gestion intégrée des ressources, il est nécessaire de mettre les acteurs au centre des préoccupations de recherche, à la fois lors de la phase la conception du modèle mais aussi pour l’exploration de ces scénarios.

Should researchers be honest brokers or advocates?

September 5, 2024April 5, 2016

By John Callewaert

When to advocate and when to be an honest broker is a question that deserves serious attention by those working on collaborative and engaged research initiatives. In my role as the Integrated Assessment director at the University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute I facilitate a wide array of collaborative research efforts. For most of our initiatives we strive to work within an honest broker frame. Following the work of Pielke (2007), the honest broker engages in decision-making by clarifying and sometimes expanding the scope of choice to decision-makers. Our recent analysis of options for High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing in Michigan^[1] (fracking) and outlining sustainability goals for our Ann Arbor campus^[2] are two examples which involved teams of faculty, students, practitioners and decision-makers.

The honest broker approach was particularly important for the project on fracking given the polarized views that can sometimes be associated with this topic.

Towards an evaluation framework for participatory modeling

September 5, 2024March 31, 2016

By Miles McNall

What are the results of participatory modeling efforts? What contextual factors, resources and processes contribute to these results? Answering such questions requires the systematic and ongoing evaluation of processes, outputs and outcomes. At present participatory modeling lacks a framework to guide such evaluation efforts. In this post I offer some initial thoughts on the features of this framework.

A first step in developing an evaluation framework for participatory modeling is to establish criteria for processes, outputs, and outcomes. Such criteria would answer a basic question about what it means when we say that a participatory modeling process, output, or outcome is good, worthy, or meritorious.

Research impact: Six kinds of change

September 5, 2024March 29, 2016

By Gabriele Bammer

What kinds of change can implementation of research findings contribute to? Sometimes the aim is to make change happen, while at other times research implementation is in response to particular proposed or ongoing change.

Making change happen

Two ways of making change happen that are important for research impact are: 1) contributing to the on-going quest for improvement and 2) combatting practices or behaviours that have negative outcomes for individuals or society.

Examples of contributing to the quest for ongoing improvement include technological research such as invention of thinner lenses to revolutionise cameras and social research such as development and implementation of a disability insurance scheme.

Moving from models that synthesize to models that innovate

September 11, 2024March 24, 2016

By Pete Loucks

When computer technology became available for developing and using graphics interfaces for interactive decision support systems, some of us got excited about the potential of directly involving stakeholders in the modeling and analyses of various water resource systems. Many of us believed that generating pictures that could show the impact of various design and management decisions or assumptions any user might want to make would give them a better understanding of the system being modeled and how they might improve its performance.

We even got fancy with respect performing sensitivity analyses and displaying uncertainty. Our displays were clear, understandable, and colorful. Sometimes we witnessed users even believing what they were seeing. We occasionally had to remind users that our models were, and would continue to be, approximations of reality, at best. It was fun developing and using such tools, and indeed today most models that are used to analyze river basins, groundwater, and coastal zones incorporate interactive, graphics-based, decision support frameworks.

The knowledge practice paradox

March 3, 2026March 22, 2016

By Robert Duiveman

Both researchers and politicians frequently claim that the interactions between science and public policy need reform and improvement: an agenda actualized by people all over the world by engaging in new collaborative knowledge practices. But a closer relationship doesn’t necessarily equal a better one; it depends on the design of the collaboration as well as the choices made along the way.

Given the societal and scientific importance attached to new knowledge practices, there is a striking lack of insight into what is actually done within them. There seems to be what I label a knowledge practice paradox. In order to ensure that an experimental collaborative knowledge practice gets its results accepted and implemented ‘in real world circumstances’ it needs to be presented as scientifically sound, politically adroit and deliberatively legitimized.

Yet – as those involved know – research methods and design alone are usually insufficient to get there. It’s the practical wisdom (phronèsis) applied along the way that is key to real success.