Keywords

Climate change adaptation, collective decision process, Problem Structuring Methods, Socisl Network Analysis

Start Date

27-6-2018 10:40 AM

End Date

27-6-2018 12:00 PM

Abstract

There is a mounting international interest about how to address the implications of climate change for urban areas. The availability and sharing of “good” knowledge and information is a key prerequisite for a successful planning in cities, specifically if we consider climate change adaptation as a collective decision process. This raises the importance of the availability/usability of proper “planner/user friendly” interfaces – i.e. climate services – helping decision makers to interpret and translate the available information into adaptation decisions, and to facilitate the sharing of this information within the interaction network in which the different actors are embedded. Evidences demonstrate that ambiguity in problem understanding could represent a barrier to the actual use of climate services in urban adaptation, because it could lead to different information needs. Ambiguity in problem framing could affect the connection between information production and decision process. The activities described in this work aimed at facilitating the use of climate services as tools to enable the collective decision-making process for urban adaptation in Helsinki. To this aim, two main issue have been addressed: i) the ambiguity in problem understanding; ii) the complexity of the interaction network involving the different decision-actors. Two main approaches were implemented, i.e. Problem Structuring Methods (PSM) for ambiguity analysis and Social Network Analysis (SNA) for unravelling the complexity of the interaction networks involving the different stakeholders. The results of this integrated approach have been used to develop and experimentally test a collective decision making platform for urban adaption.

Stream and Session

C1 - Participatory Modelling, Ambiguity and the Challenges of Being Inclusive

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Jun 27th, 10:40 AM Jun 27th, 12:00 PM

Ambiguity in decision-makers’ information needs: from barrier to enabling factor for urban adaptation to climate change

There is a mounting international interest about how to address the implications of climate change for urban areas. The availability and sharing of “good” knowledge and information is a key prerequisite for a successful planning in cities, specifically if we consider climate change adaptation as a collective decision process. This raises the importance of the availability/usability of proper “planner/user friendly” interfaces – i.e. climate services – helping decision makers to interpret and translate the available information into adaptation decisions, and to facilitate the sharing of this information within the interaction network in which the different actors are embedded. Evidences demonstrate that ambiguity in problem understanding could represent a barrier to the actual use of climate services in urban adaptation, because it could lead to different information needs. Ambiguity in problem framing could affect the connection between information production and decision process. The activities described in this work aimed at facilitating the use of climate services as tools to enable the collective decision-making process for urban adaptation in Helsinki. To this aim, two main issue have been addressed: i) the ambiguity in problem understanding; ii) the complexity of the interaction network involving the different decision-actors. Two main approaches were implemented, i.e. Problem Structuring Methods (PSM) for ambiguity analysis and Social Network Analysis (SNA) for unravelling the complexity of the interaction networks involving the different stakeholders. The results of this integrated approach have been used to develop and experimentally test a collective decision making platform for urban adaption.