Vivian Juliette Cortes Arevalo

Users’ Perspectives About the Potential Usefulness of Online Storylines to Communicate River Research to a Multi-disciplinary Audience

ABSTRACT Effective communication practices are needed to support adaptive, collaborative and integrative environmental management. We propose the use of online storylines to communicate scientific outcomes in a way that is captivating, easily understood and accessible. Based on 20 interviews, we identified important attributes for the storyline content, structure and user interaction. We designed a storyline example about stakeholders’ perceptions of a river management intervention with consequences on the landscape. The intended audience consists of multi-disciplinary researchers and practitioners that could consider or apply research solutions outside their field of expertise in river management. We introduced the example in a workshop with 14 participants from research and practice. Our findings highlight the importance of including narrative elements via images, interactive figures and timelines to illustrate the research context. Moreover, storylines should explicitly state benefits as well as the limitations of the river research and include a glossary to clarify specific terms.

Designing Virtual River: A Serious Gaming Environment to Collaboratively Explore Management Strategies in River and Floodplain Maintenance

Dutch river management is in transition from a phase of intervention and implementation to a phase of maintenance. In light of this transition, we discuss initial results towards the development of a serious gaming environment where river and floodplain management actors can collaboratively explore intervention and maintenance strategies. We introduce the design approach of a serious gaming environment based on qualitative interviews with river and floodplain maintenance actors. Based on these interviews, we identified two key variables to explore strategies for river and floodplain maintenance: maintenance intervals and floodplain scaling. We proceed with presenting the Virtual River; a concept for a serious gaming environment. In this environment, actors can play out intervention and maintenance scenarios around these two key variables over time using simplified hydrological, morphodynamic and vegetation models.