Michael Bravo

A Collaboratively-Derived Science-Policy Research Agenda

The need for policy makers to understand science and for scientists to understand policy processes is widely recognised. However, the science-policy relationship is sometimes difficult and occasionally dysfunctional; it is also increasingly visible, because it must deal with contentious issues, or itself becomes a matter of public controversy, or both. We suggest that identifying key unanswered questions on the relationship between science and policy will catalyse and focus research in this field. To identify these questions, a collaborative procedure was employed with 52 participants selected to cover a wide range of experience in both science and policy, including people from government, non-governmental organisations, academia and industry. These participants consulted with colleagues and submitted 239 questions. An initial round of voting was followed by a workshop in which 40 of the most important questions were identified by further discussion and voting. The resulting list includes questions about the effectiveness of science-based decision-making structures; the nature and legitimacy of expertise; the consequences of changes such as increasing transparency; choices among different sources of evidence; the implications of new means of characterising and representing uncertainties; and ways in which policy and political processes affect what counts as authoritative evidence. We expect this exercise to identify important theoretical questions and to help improve the mutual understanding and effectiveness of those working at the interface of science and policy.

Return to Babel: Emergent Diversity, Digital Resources, and Local Knowledge

Information system research that recognizes, supports, and enables access of diverse knowledge communities online has become a major concern. Of particular concern is how these digital resources can support and preserve local identities and promote grass-roots involvement in creating the infrastructure of devolved governance. The aim of this article is to expose some of the conceptual obstacles to programs of devolved and local knowledge resources, and to provide an account of agency that recognizes that online communities, and community identity, are essential for eliciting, managing, and sharing local knowledges. Further, this article demonstrates how the implications of these issues impact institutions for managing knowledge that may be extended to all sorts of knowledge communities.

Social studies of volcanology: knowledge generation and expert advice on active volcanoes

This paper examines the philosophy and evolution of volcanological science in recent years, particularly in relation to the growth of volcanic hazard and risk science. It uses the lens of Science and Technology Studies to examine the ways in which knowledge generation is controlled and directed by social forces, particularly during eruptions, which constitute landmarks in the development of new technologies and models. It also presents data from a survey of volcanologists carried out during late 2008 and early 2009. These data concern the felt purpose of the science according to the volcanologists who participated and their impressions of the most important eruptions in historical time. It demonstrates that volcanologists are motivated both by the academic science environment and by a social concern for managing the impact of volcanic hazards on populations. Also discussed are the eruptions that have most influenced the discipline and the role of scientists in policymaking on active volcanoes. Expertise in volcanology can become the primary driver of public policy very suddenly when a volcano erupts, placing immense pressure on volcanologists. In response, the epistemological foundations of volcanology are on the move, with an increasing volume of research into risk assessment and management. This requires new, integrated methodologies for knowledge collection that transcend scientific disciplinary boundaries.

Science at the policy interface: volcano-monitoring technologies and volcanic hazard management

This paper discusses results from a survey of volcanologists carried out on the Volcano Listserv during late 2008 and early 2009. In particular, it examines the status of volcano monitoring technologies and their relative perceived value at persistently and potentially active volcanoes. It also examines the role of different types of knowledge in hazard assessment on active volcanoes, as reported by scientists engaged in this area, and interviewees with experience from the current eruption on Montserrat. Conclusions are drawn about the current state of monitoring and the likely future research directions, and also about the roles of expertise and experience in risk assessment on active volcanoes; while local knowledge is important, it must be balanced with fresh ideas and expertise in a combination of disciplines to produce an advisory context that is conducive to high-level scientific discussion.

Communicating Climate Knowledge

This forum article is the product of interdisciplinary discussion at a conference on climate histories held in Cambridge, United Kingdom, in early 2011, with the specific aim of building a network around the issue of communicating cultural knowledge of environmental change. The lead articles, by Kirsten Hastrup as an anthropologist and Simon Schaffer as a historian of science, highlight the role of agents and proxies. These are followed by five interdisciplinary commentaries, which engage with the lead articles through new ethnographic material, and a set of shorter commentaries by leading scholars of different disciplines. Finally, the lead authors respond to the discussion. In this debate, climate change does not emerge as a single preformed “problem.” Rather, different climate knowledges appear as products of particular networks and agencies. Just as the identification of proxies creates agents (ice, mountains, informants) by inserting them into new networks, we hope that these cross-disciplinary exchanges will produce further conversations and new approaches to action.

Epilogue: The Humanism of Sea Ice

This chapter assesses the contributions to understanding sea ice in terms of the concept of social ontology, which refers to the web of social relations that give objects their meaning and significance. In the Inuit world, sea ice has a clearly defined set of nomenclatures and toponymies, and is embedded in a rich system of meanings and significance. By contrast the meaning of sea ice in the sciences is different and varied, but it is not simply mechanical or lifeless. Natural historians and natural philosophers are shown to have long contested the broader significance of a sea ice and its philosophical significance in the history of the earth sciences. The predominant interpretation of sea ice as an inert obstacle to progress reflects the social and religious contexts in Europe and America where scientific progress was often closely linked to commitments to economic improvement through commerce, trade, and profitable shipping routes. The essays in this volume, taken together, also represent, a sustained a thoroughly researched contribution to a humanistic understanding of the High Arctic and knowledge of it during International Polar Year 2007–2008.

Chapter 25 Reflexive volcanology: 15 years of communicating risk and uncertainty in scientific advice on Montserrat

Abstract This paper examines in detail the history of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) reports – formerly the Risk Assessment Panel (RAP). In particular, it discusses examples of processes within the SAC reporting as constituting a reflexive process: as methods are used, reviewed, reacted to and redefined, there is a honing of the material and report format. This is used to draw some conclusions about the nature of reporting volcanic risk and scientific uncertainty, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Results from a 2011 survey of Montserratians are provided to contextualize the discussion. The paper concludes by looking more broadly at risk governance on Montserrat, and how risk management feeds back into risk assessment via the public domain.