Catharina Landström

Flood apprentices: an exercise in making things public

Abstract Taking our lead from Stengers’ experimental constructivism, this paper reports on the invention of a research apparatus – the ‘competency group’ (CG) – that aims to put things capable of forcing thought and attachment to work in the exercise of new knowledge polities. It draws on the work of one such group based in Pickering, a town in the catchment of Ryedale with long experience of flooding. This group involved social and natural scientists working collaboratively with people affected by flooding over a twelve-month period, to interrogate the science that informs local flood management and intervene in the public controversy to which it had given rise. The paper focuses on the ways in which various artefacts that mediated our collective flood apprenticeship in Ryedale were recharged as publicity devices through which the working practices and knowledge claims of what became the Ryedale Flood Research Group gathered political force in the wake of the groups work.

Coproducing Flood Risk Knowledge: Redistributing Expertise in Critical ‘Participatory Modelling’

This paper suggests that computer simulation modelling can offer opportunities for redistributing expertise between science and affected publics in relation to environmental problems. However, in order for scientific modelling to contribute to the coproduction of new knowledge claims about environmental processes, scientists need to reposition themselves with respect to their modelling practices. In the paper we examine a process in which two hydrological modellers became part of an extended research collective generating new knowledge about flooding in a small rural town in the UK. This process emerged in a project trialling a novel participatory research apparatus—competency groups—aiming to harness the energy generated in public controversy and enable other than scientific expertise to contribute to environmental knowledge. Analysing the process repositioning the scientists in terms of a dynamic of ‘dissociation’ and ‘attachment’, we map the ways in which prevailing alignments of expertise were unravelled and new connections assembled, in relation to the matter of concern. We show how the redistribution of knowledge and skills in the extended research collective resulted in a new computer model, embodying the coproduced flood risk knowledge.

Imagining flood futures: risk assessment and management in practice

The mantra that policy and management should be ‘evidence-based’ is well established. Less so are the implications that follow from ‘evidence’ being predictions of the future (forecasts, scenarios, horizons) even though such futures define the actions taken today to make the future sustainable. Here, we consider the tension between ‘evidence’, reliable because it is observed, and predictions of the future, unobservable in conventional terms. For flood risk management in England and Wales, we show that futures are actively constituted, and so imagined, through ‘suites of practices’ entwining policy, management and scientific analysis. Management has to constrain analysis because of the many ways in which flood futures can be constructed, but also because of commitment to an accounting calculus, which requires risk to be expressed in monetary terms. It is grounded in numerical simulation, undertaken by scientific consultants who follow policy/management guidelines that define the futures to be considered. Historical evidence is needed to deal with process and parameter uncertainties and the futures imagined are tied to pasts experienced. Reliance on past events is a challenge for prediction, given changing probability (e.g. climate change) and consequence (e.g. development on floodplains). So, risk management allows some elements of risk analysis to become unstable (notably in relation to climate change) but forces others to remain stable (e.g. invoking regulation to prevent inappropriate floodplain development). We conclude that the assumed separation of risk assessment and management is false because the risk calculation has to be defined by management. Making this process accountable requires openness about the procedures that make flood risk analysis more (or less) reliable to those we entrust to produce and act upon them such that, unlike the ‘pseudosciences’, they can be put to the test of public interrogation by those who have to live with their consequences.

Explaining Rapid Transitions in the Practice of Flood Risk Management

This article draws on empirical material to reflect on what drives rapid change in flood risk management practice, reflecting wider interest in the way that scientific practices make risk landscapes and a specific focus on extreme events as drivers of rapid change. Such events are commonly referred to as a form of creative destruction, ones that reveal both the composition of socioenvironmental assemblages and provide a creative opportunity to remake those assemblages in alternate ways, therefore rapidly changing policy and practice. Drawing on wider thinking in complexity theory, we argue that what happens between events might be as, if not more, important than the events themselves. We use two empirical examples concerned with flood risk management practice: a rapid shift in the dominant technologies used to map flood risk in the United Kingdom and an experimental approach to public participation tested in two different locations, with dramatically different consequences. Both show that the state of the socioenvironmental assemblage in which the events take place matters as much as the magnitude of the events themselves. The periods between rapid changes are not simply periods of discursive consolidation but involve the ongoing mutation of such assemblages, which could either sensitize or desensitize them to rapid change. Understanding these intervening periods matters as much as the events themselves. If events matter, it is because of the ways in which they might bring into sharp focus the coding or framing of a socioenvironmental assemblage in policy or scientific practice irrespective of whether or not those events evolve the assemblage in subtle or more radical ways.

Learning through Computer Model Improvisations

It has been convincingly argued that computer simulation modeling differs from traditional science. If we understand simulation modeling as a new way of doing science, the manner in which scientists learn about the world through models must also be considered differently. This article examines how researchers learn about environmental processes through computer simulation modeling. Suggesting a conceptual framework anchored in a performative philosophical approach, we examine two modeling projects undertaken by research teams in England, both aiming to inform flood risk management. One of the modeling teams operated in the research wing of a consultancy firm, the other were university scientists taking part in an interdisciplinary project experimenting with public engagement. We found that in the first context the use of standardized software was critical to the process of improvisation, the obstacles emerging in the process concerned data and were resolved through exploiting affordances for generating, organizing, and combining scientific information in new ways. In the second context, an environmental competency group, obstacles were related to the computer program and affordances emerged in the combination of experience-based knowledge with the scientists’ skill enabling a reconfiguration of the mathematical structure of the model, allowing the group to learn about local flooding.

The (Mis)understanding of Scientific Uncertainty? How Experts View Policy-Makers, the Media and Publics

Abstract Frequent claims that publics ‘misunderstand’ science ignore the contested definition of scientific uncertainty itself. Scientific uncertainty means different things in the natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities, while public controversies show that interpretations of scientific uncertainty have different implications for policy and decision-making. This prompts analysis of the ways that experts view scientific uncertainty and how they characterise the (mis)understandings of this uncertainty by policy-makers, media and publics. Experts from diverse academic fields define scientific uncertainty differently depending on their disciplinary background. For example, mathematics provides experts from the natural sciences with a practice language that facilitates communication with those sharing this cultural competence, but it does not suffice for engaging with wider audiences. Further, experts’ views of diverse publics come across as folk theories, in Arie Rips terms, which, compiled from disparate pieces of information, can be used to fill a gap in the knowledge about publics.

Long-term repository governance: a socio-technical challenge

As geological disposal (GD) of higher activity radioactive wastes seems to be moving towards implementation in some countries (most prominently perhaps in Finland and Sweden), this paper reflects on a number of governance questions this raises. We highlight the near long-term governance of such repositories (that is to say the process beginning with construction and finishing when closure is fully completed). This time period comes into view when the implementation process shifts from siting to hosting. The notion of hosting emphasises the relationship between the repository and its host community. A relationship that demands, we argue in this paper, a re-figuration of the geography and temporality of GD. Hosting a geological disposal facility brings with it specific socio-technical challenges, i.e. problems which involve both social and technical adjustments, as well as reconfigurations of the boundary between them. In this paper, we discuss three such challenges, namely complexity (due to the changes in spatial organisation), residual risk (referring to events that are not accidents, but sub-critical in relation to hazards or anomalies in relation to expectations) and perpetual uncertainty (with respect to both scientific knowledge and societal decision-making). As such, the question of the long-term governance of geological repositories is not specific to the post-Fukushima era. However, we do see a strong link between this question and the question of the (long-term) governance of major accident sites, of which Fukushima figures as one of the most poignant examples, and which also face issues of complexity, residual risk and perpetual uncertainty.

Virtually expert: modes of environmental computer simulation modeling.

This paper challenges three assumptions common in the literature on expertise: that expertise is linearly derived from scientific knowledge; that experts always align with the established institutional order; and that expertise is a property acquired by individuals. We criticize these ideas by juxtaposing three distinct expert practices involved with flood risk management in England. Virtual engineering is associated with commercial consultancy and relies on standardized software packages to assess local flood inundation. Mathematical experimentation refers to academic scientists creating new digital renderings of the physical dynamics of flooding. Participatory modeling denotes research projects that aim to transform the relationships between experts and local communities. Focusing on different modes of modeling we contribute an analysis of how particular models articulate with specific politics of knowledge as experts form relationships with flood risk management actors. Our empirical study also shows how models can contribute to re-distribution of expertise in local flood risk management.

The Professors: Sarah Whatmore and Paul Whitehead in Conversation About the Kennet ECG

Professors Sarah Whatmore and Paul Whitehead situate the Kennet ECG in a wider scientific context. In addition to reflecting on her participation in the Kennet ECG, Sarah talks about the philosophical underpinnings of the ECGs methodology. From Paul, we learn about the origins of the INCA water quality model in a 1990s controversy over abstraction from the River Kennet. The Professors also reflect on how transdisciplinary practice differs from their disciplinary research. This conversation provides insights into the importance of social and natural science research trajectories and personal interests.

Introduction: Transdisciplinary Environmental Engagement in Practice

In the introduction, Catharina Landstrom explains the purpose of the book: to convey a sense of transdisciplinary research practice by means of three conversations among people who took part in an Environmental Competency Group that explored water management issues relating to the River Kennet. Important terms with multiple uses are clarified (transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, stakeholder and participatory). Further, she provides a brief overview of some practical challenges facing transdisciplinary research and explains how the Environmental Competency Groups (ECGs) methodology addresses these. Finally, the Kennet ECG, undertaken within the MaRIUS project on droughts and water scarcity is presented and the conversation format is explained.