Role of cyberinfrastructure for engaging multi-sectoral stakeholders in use-inspired and decision-relevant research on adaptation to climate change
Abstract
Adaptation to climate change requires coordination of context-sensitive decisions at a local scale, with multiple implications for affected economic sectors and stakeholders. This social-physical nature of adaptation requires that adaptation research must be use-inspired that is grounded in theory but, at the same time, guided ("inspired") by practical and decision-relevant problems. Computational tools and cyberinfrastructure that support such tools constitute as backbone to many of the complex data-intensive analyses that are typically conducted in adaptation research. However, cyberinfrastructure research in the recent past has been primarily focused on supporting research communities via computational infrastructure consisting of networking, storage, standards, middleware, and computation capabilities. The need for researchers engaged in adaptation science to closely collaborate with and involve decision makers and community stakeholders in problem solving has necessitated that a broader vision must be realized on the role of cyberinfrastructure to support climate-change adaptation research. In this presentation, we present a novel, use-inspired, cyberinfrastructure InterACTWEL, which is being created to support collaboration between researchers and decision makers on stakeholder-driven planning of adaptation to climate-change impacts in local agricultural communities. For our testbed local community within the Columbia River Basin, where a multi-sectoral group of stakeholders (municipalities, farmers, planners, water-energy-land managers, tribes, and state & federal agencies) are exploring soft (water rights policies and best management practices) and hard (investment and construction of new water infrastructure) adaptation strategies for adapting to stresses in accessibility and availability of regional water resources, we demonstrate how InterACTWEL cyberinfrastructure is enabling decision-relevant research. In this presentation, we will also present current and future opportunities and challenges in integrating multi-sectoral data and stakeholders as well as vision for supporting transdisciplinary science via use-inspired cyberinfrastructure similar to InterACTWEL.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMGC0720015B
- Keywords:
-
- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1834 Human impacts;
- HYDROLOGY;
- 3275 Uncertainty quantification;
- MATHEMATICAL GEOPHYSICS;
- 6344 System operation and management;
- POLICY SCIENCES & PUBLIC ISSUES