Anticipating Public Acceptance: The Hydrogen Case

Current energy related issues, such as climate change or the oil depletion, demand technological and societal change towards new ways of producing and using energy. One of the challenges coming with the development of these new solutions relates to the impact that these technologies will have on society, and how people will react to these...

Connecting reason to power: Assessments, learning, and environmental policy integration in Swedish energy policy

The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to understanding what makes a policymaking system better at integrating sustainability concerns into its processes. Three questions are in focus. First, how can policy integration be understood analytically and what is its actual status in sector policy? Second, what conditions have facilitated or...

Relating Actor Analysis Methods to Policy Problems

For a policy analyst the policy problem is the starting point for the policy analysis process. During this process the policy analyst structures the policy problem and makes a choice for an appropriate set of methods or techniques to analyze the problem (Goeller 1984). The methods of the policy analyst are often referred to as the toolbox or...

An Institutional Approach to Peri-Urban Water Problems: Supporting community problem solving in the peri-urban Ganges Delta

Water resources in the Ganges delta are undergoing drastic change as a result of urbanisation. Increasing demand for water due to urban expansion around cities like Kolkata (India) and Khulna (Bangladesh) is affecting groundwater access in nearby peri-urban communities. Peri-urban areas lie outside the formal purview of urban institutions, while...

The Adaptive Robust Design Approach: Improving Analytical Support under Deep Uncertainty

Policymaking often involves different parties such as policymakers, stakeholders, and analysts each with distinct roles in the process. To assist policymakers, policy analysts help in structuring the problem, designing, and evaluating policy alternatives. Analysts face many challenges, like complexity and uncertainty in a system of interest,...

Supporting Adaptive Delta Management: Systematic Exploration of Community Livelihood Adaptation as Uncertainty

Long-term planning in urbanizing deltas has to deal with deep uncertainties in socio-economic development and climate change. Adaptive Delta Management (ADM) has been developed as an approach that acknowledges these and similar uncertainties. The Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100 has, in principle, adopted the ADM approach, and it recognizes general...

Towards Flexibility in the Design and Management of Multifunctional Flood Defences

Multifunctional use of flood defences is proposed in the Netherlands to increase the synergy between flood protection and urbanism and to enhance the cost-effectiveness of flood protection. Once a multifunctional flood defence is constructed, it will become technically and financially hard to modify and adjust the system configuration. Such an...

The Participation Triangle: Involving Generation Y in energy strategy

The liberalization of the Dutch energy market has led to a change of relation between energy companies and their customers. At the same time, the Dutch energy policy expects energy companies to contribute to an energy supply that is cleaner, smarter and more varied, and available at any time at affordable prices. The situation since the...

Narrative perspectives on the development of coastal pilot projects

Pilot projects are favoured instruments for exploring and perhaps realising<br/>policy change. The challenges that coastal policy faces, the frequency with<br/>which pilot projects are implemented, and the criticisms regarding their<br/>efficacy make it interesting and relevant to study pilot projects in this policy<br/>field. This dissertation...

Tourism’s impact on climate change and its mitigation challenges: How can tourism become ‘climatically sustainable’?

In 2015, the global community came together in Paris and agreed on a CO2 emissions pathway to avoid a temperature anomaly of more than 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. A significant source of CO2 emissions, the main greenhouse gas causing climate change, is the tourism sector. From research published by the UNWTO (World Tourism Organisation) in...

Modelling Uncertainty: Developing and Using Simulation Models for Exploring the Consequences of Deep Uncertainty in Complex Problems

Simulation models are increasingly used for exploring the consequences of deep uncertainty in complex societal issues. The complexity of societal grand challenges, often characterised by the interrelatedness of different elements in the systems underlying these challenges, often renders mental simulation impossible, necessitating the use of...

Co-design in the coastal context

In this research, we set out to investigate the phenomenon of ‘co-design’ and explore the applicability of co-design in the complex coastal context. We have turned to investigating design-oriented, collaborative activities aimed at innovative coastal solutions (co-design) and how they strengthen the development of solutions for coastal problems....