WP6. Productive Knowledge Interaction (PROD) Facility

Responsible partner: Deltares (G.-J Ellen)

Delta management involves dealing with inherent scientific uncertainties on the one hand, and complexity of stakeholders and their interests on the other hand. In this complex landscape, it is not sufficient to ‘communicate’ scientific findings as an end-of-the-pipe and one-way activity. Empirical evidence shows that active involvement of non-academic stakeholders with their experience and practical knowledge at different stages of knowledge creation, promotes the real-world relevancy of research outcomes. These are coined ‘productive interactions’, where ‘productiveness’ is determined by the efforts of stakeholders to change behavior and apply research results to social goals. In the current practice of river, estuarine and coastal science in the Netherlands, intense science-practice networks are established in NCR and NCK, but although this provides an extremely valuable tight network of scientists and practitioners, the knowledge uptake/valorisation approach is intuitive and has inherent limitations due to the low level of sophistication in the communication of often very complex concepts and models. At the same time, existing advanced communication infrastructure at TUD (Gamelab), WUR (WANDER-LAB), UT (DesignLab) and Deltares (iD-Lab) is currently under-used for knowledge interaction in the field of delta management. The PROD Facility will connect these individual facilities into a national network, allowing each of them to specialize in one aspect of productive knowledge interactions but basing them on a common communication and data backbone. This will, in addition, provide a joint facility for active social science research into improvement of productive science-science and science-practice interactions.