F.M. d'Hont
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17 records found
1
Decision-making in the context of the mobility transition requires considering complexity, many actors, and uncertainty about the future. So, choosing effective policies to achieve a more sustainable system is challenging. We build on participatory modeling and decision-making under deep uncertainty to create a novel approach to investigate the capabilities of decision-makers to interact with an agent-based model to explore various transport policies. This paper reports the results of two workshops with students exploring the mobility transition for a fictional version of a city in the Netherlands The participants made decisions in the role of either government or transport provider and evaluated the systemic impact of those decisions. We found that the participants were well-equipped to deliberate policy options under deep uncertainty using model simulations depicting a range of possible outcomes under different scenarios, embracing uncertainty in some respects and ignoring it in others. This study demonstrates the potential of participatory model-based exploration for mobility transitions to deliberate policy options under uncertainty using an agent-based model.
Modeling with a municipality
Exploring robust policies to foster climate-neutral mobility
Many European cities are investigating how to transition to climate-neutral transport systems. Due to the transport system's complexity and uncertainty about the future, identifying drivers and choosing effective policies to make the city more sustainable is challenging. Additionally, the chosen policies need to be supported by relevant actors. This study aims to support the municipality of The Hague in generating robust policies supported by and within the municipality. We build on participatory modeling and decision-making under deep uncertainty to create a novel approach to address this goal. In two workshops, the participants formulated goals and objectives, created Causal Loop diagrams, and identified potential interventions. Using a set of possible futures, the interventions were then stress-tested to evaluate their robustness. By explicitly linking, for the first time, participatory modeling and decision-making under deep uncertainty approaches, the participants could understand the system better and deal with uncertainty. Participants gained insight into systemic complexity and methods to deal with it, the inter-relatedness of interventions and their effects, and a shared understanding of the problem and its scope. This study demonstrates the potential of a novel approach to generate supported robust interventions to achieve the goal of a climate-neutral transport system.
Including local knowledge in coastal policy innovation
Comparing three Dutch case studies
In the context of a growing emphasis on research and application of citizen engagement methods in environmental planning and management (e.g. Reed 2008; Von Korff et al. 2010), we compare three collaborative activities aimed at finding innovative coastal policy solutions in the Netherlands. In these activities, participants across the citizen, science and policy divide were involved in designing nature-based interventions for specific areas in the Netherlands. The activities are compared in terms of the theoretical promise stakeholder engagement holds for influencing participants’ understanding of the respective bio-geophysical systems, the actor networks and for effecting knowledge sharing. We find local knowledge offers the potential for crafting coastal policy solutions to fit the specific bio-geophysical and societal context. The empirical analysis revealed the deep competence of local people, who generally understand their lived environment in a systemic way, and the knowledge that can be harvested to broaden and enrich the design space for coastal solutions–in addition to a willingness on the part of the stakeholders to collaborate in developing local solutions for sustainable futures. Although measures to reduce power differences and enable local knowledge inclusion served to broaden the design space for innovative solutions in our case studies, they also constrained the scientific and technical quality of the contributions from professional experts such as bio-geophysical scientists, engineers, spatial planners and policy analysts. As such, future work addressing the dilemma of integrating high quality professional inputs into coastal policy solutions founded on local expertise is advocated.
protect the Dutch coast from flooding has been the central issue in coastal management
for centuries. The damming in 1932 of the Zuiderzee, a major salt water branch of the
Dutch Wadden Sea, formed a fresh water lake –the IJsselmeer – and initiated a process
of coastal sedimentary readjustment of which the Texel Inlet and adjacent coasts are
parts. However, since 1990 Dutch coastal policy is aimed at preventing structural erosion
by maintaining the Dutch coastline at the 1990 position through sand nourishments.
This objectives-based policy and associated sand nourishment strategy now ensures that
south west Texel receives a large portion of the national sand nourishment budget as it
is an erosion hotspot. In this case study, we focus on the evolution of integrated flood
risk management at Texel Island, showing how scientific insights into coastal dynamics
have influenced coastal policy in the past (section 2.4), and how recent advancements in knowledge on the natural dynamics of the system (section 2.3) and on the importance
of stakeholder involvement in environmental management, may play a role in a potential
adaptation of the policy (section 2.5). In essence, the Texel Inlet case study highlights how
a single issue – flood risk management – can dominate in determining the objectives for
coastal management, and highlights the role that new scientific insights can potentially
play in influencing coastal management into the future. ...
protect the Dutch coast from flooding has been the central issue in coastal management
for centuries. The damming in 1932 of the Zuiderzee, a major salt water branch of the
Dutch Wadden Sea, formed a fresh water lake –the IJsselmeer – and initiated a process
of coastal sedimentary readjustment of which the Texel Inlet and adjacent coasts are
parts. However, since 1990 Dutch coastal policy is aimed at preventing structural erosion
by maintaining the Dutch coastline at the 1990 position through sand nourishments.
This objectives-based policy and associated sand nourishment strategy now ensures that
south west Texel receives a large portion of the national sand nourishment budget as it
is an erosion hotspot. In this case study, we focus on the evolution of integrated flood
risk management at Texel Island, showing how scientific insights into coastal dynamics
have influenced coastal policy in the past (section 2.4), and how recent advancements in knowledge on the natural dynamics of the system (section 2.3) and on the importance
of stakeholder involvement in environmental management, may play a role in a potential
adaptation of the policy (section 2.5). In essence, the Texel Inlet case study highlights how
a single issue – flood risk management – can dominate in determining the objectives for
coastal management, and highlights the role that new scientific insights can potentially
play in influencing coastal management into the future.
Co-designing the future of Texel-Zuid
Adaptive coastal management on a changing island