Assessing Framing of Uncertainties in Water Management Practice

Another result of the fruitful cooperation between Osnabrück, Leuven and Wageningen in the context of the NeWater project has just been published on-line as an article in Water Resources Management. This paper was led by Nicola Isendahl as part of her PhD project at USF Osnabrück.

This is the abstract:

Dealing with uncertainties in water management is an important issue and is one which will only increase in light of global changes, particularly climate change. So far, uncertainties in water management have mostly been assessed from a scientific point of view, and in quantitative terms. In this paper, we focus on the perspectives from water management practice, adopting a qualitative approach. We consider it important to know how uncertainties are framed in water management practice in order to develop practice relevant strategies for dealing with uncertainties. Framing refers to how people make sense of the world. With the aim of identifying what are important parameters for the framing of uncertainties in water management practice, in this paper we analyze uncertainty situations described by decision-makers in water management. The analysis builds on a series of “Uncertainty Dialogues” carried out within the NeWater project with water managers in the Rhine, Elbe and Guadiana basins in 2006. During these dialogues, representatives of these river basins were asked what uncertainties they encountered in their professional work life and how they confronted them. Analysing these dialogues we identified several important parameters of how uncertainties get framed. Our assumption is that making framing of uncertainty explicit for water managers will allow for better dealing with the respective uncertainty situations.

The reference is :

Isendahl, N., Dewulf, A., Brugnach, M., Francois, G., Moellenkamp, S.and Pahl-Wostl, C. (2009) Assessing Framing of Uncertainties in Water Management Practice. Water Resources Management, On-line First.

The paper can be downloaded on this blog or at Springerlink

Upcoming conferences

A number of interesting conferences are in sight, most of which I will have to miss because of an imminent family enlargement, but you might be able to make it. I did (or still have to) work on a number of contributions together with other authors.

IRSPM, Copenhagen
The 13th Annual Conference of the International Research Society for Public Management, Copenhagen Business School, April 6, 2009 – April 8, 2009.
Together with Katrien Termeer I worked on a paper in the Panel track 'Managing transitions in public sector infrastructure' entitled "Theoretical multiplicity for the governance of transitions: the energy producing greenhouse case".

ECPR Joint Sessions, Lissabon
The Joint Sessions of workshops of the European Consortium of Political Research, 14th - 19th April 2009.
Together with Maartje van Lieshout, Katrien Termeer and Noelle Aarts, I work on a paper for the session 'Studying the Political through Frame Analysis' entitled "Framing scales and scaling frames".

IHDP, Bonn
7th International Science Conference on the Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (Open Meeting), "Social Challenges of Global Change" originally scheduled for 15-19 October 2008, will take place from April 26-30 2009 in Bonn, Germany.
Together with Helen Ingram, Marcela Brugnach and Katrien Termeer, I'm working on a paper for the session 'Institutionally challenged: history and prospects of managing river basins in a changing global environment', entitled "The Co-Production of Knowledge about Water Resources: Framing, Uncertainty and Climate Change".

KSI, Amsterdam
First European Conference on Sustainability Transitions: Dynamics & Governance of Transitions to Sustainability, 4th to 6th June 2009Felix Meritis, Amsterdam.
Together with my colleagues at the Public Administration and Policy Group, Katrien Termeer, Renate Werkman and Gerard Breeman, I worked on a paper entitled "The value of theoretical multiplicity for steering transitions towards sustainability".

MOPAN, Dublin
16th Annual Conference on Multi-Organisational Partnerships, Alliances and Networks (MOPAN), NUI Maynooth, June 17th - 20th 2009.
Together with the network for reserach and facilitation of multi-actor collaboration 'Cycloop' I'm organizing a Symposium “Competing claims on space – Framing interests in multi-actor collaboration”

AISDRC, Utrecht
15th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference July 5-8, 2009, Utrecht, Netherlands.