TY - JOUR
T1 - Purpose, processes, partnerships, and products
T2 - Four Ps to advance participatory socio-environmental modeling: Four
AU - Gray, Steven
AU - Voinov, Alexey
AU - Paolisso, Michael
AU - Jordan, Rebecca
AU - Bendor, Todd
AU - Bommel, Pierre
AU - Glynn, Pierre
AU - Hedelin, Beatrice
AU - Hubacek, Klaus
AU - Introne, Josh
AU - Kolagani, Nagesh
AU - Laursen, Bethany
AU - Prell, Christina
AU - Schmitt Olabisi, Laura
AU - Singer, Alison
AU - Sterling, Eleanor
AU - Zellner, Moira
N1 - Funding Information:
USAID Zambia’s role as a convenor gave the participatory nature of the project significant weight. Many organizations and individuals whose work was funded or supported by the mission felt highly motivated to attend and participate. To the mission’s credit, they actively sought representation from groups with opposing views; for example, one NGO promoted conservation agriculture in ecologically sensitive areas, while several others opposed this practice. All participants agreed that women were not well represented at the workshops, given their important role in charcoal production. The modeling team sought to address this by conducting interviews with female farmers and charcoal producers during the model-building phase of the project.
Funding Information:
This study was provided by the National Science Foundation through the Socio-environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) in Annapolis, Maryland, USA. We would like to thank David Hawthorne and Gabrielle Bammer for their involvement and support. Support for this project also comes from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to the Reefs Tomorrow Initiative and from the National Science Foundation (NSF) under Grants No. EF-1427091 and 1444184 to E. J. Sterling. Because one of the co-authors of this paper, P. D. Glynn, is an employee of the U.S. Geological Survey, the following statement applies. Any use of trade, product, or firm names in this publication is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. We also thank Keith Lucey and Jody Eimer.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 by the Ecological Society of America.
PY - 2018/1
Y1 - 2018/1
N2 - Including stakeholders in environmental model building and analysis is an increasingly popular approach to understanding ecological change. This is because stakeholders often hold valuable knowledge about socio-environmental dynamics and collaborative forms of modeling produce important boundary objects used to collectively reason about environmental problems. Although the number of participatory modeling (PM) case studies and the number of researchers adopting these approaches has grown in recent years, the lack of standardized reporting and limited reproducibility have prevented PM's establishment and advancement as a cohesive field of study. We suggest a four-dimensional framework (4P) that includes reporting on dimensions of (1) the Purpose for selecting a PM approach (the why); (2) the Process by which the public was involved in model building or evaluation (the how); (3) the Partnerships formed (the who); and (4) the Products that resulted from these efforts (the what). We highlight four case studies that use common PM software-based approaches (fuzzy cognitive mapping, agent-based modeling, system dynamics, and participatory geospatial modeling) to understand human-environment interactions and the consequences of ecological changes, including bushmeat hunting in Tanzania and Cameroon, agricultural production and deforestation in Zambia, and groundwater management in India. We demonstrate how standardizing communication about PM case studies can lead to innovation and new insights about model-based reasoning in support of ecological policy development. We suggest that our 4P framework and reporting approach provides a way for new hypotheses to be identified and tested in the growing field of PM.
AB - Including stakeholders in environmental model building and analysis is an increasingly popular approach to understanding ecological change. This is because stakeholders often hold valuable knowledge about socio-environmental dynamics and collaborative forms of modeling produce important boundary objects used to collectively reason about environmental problems. Although the number of participatory modeling (PM) case studies and the number of researchers adopting these approaches has grown in recent years, the lack of standardized reporting and limited reproducibility have prevented PM's establishment and advancement as a cohesive field of study. We suggest a four-dimensional framework (4P) that includes reporting on dimensions of (1) the Purpose for selecting a PM approach (the why); (2) the Process by which the public was involved in model building or evaluation (the how); (3) the Partnerships formed (the who); and (4) the Products that resulted from these efforts (the what). We highlight four case studies that use common PM software-based approaches (fuzzy cognitive mapping, agent-based modeling, system dynamics, and participatory geospatial modeling) to understand human-environment interactions and the consequences of ecological changes, including bushmeat hunting in Tanzania and Cameroon, agricultural production and deforestation in Zambia, and groundwater management in India. We demonstrate how standardizing communication about PM case studies can lead to innovation and new insights about model-based reasoning in support of ecological policy development. We suggest that our 4P framework and reporting approach provides a way for new hypotheses to be identified and tested in the growing field of PM.
KW - agent-based modeling
KW - collaborative modeling
KW - fuzzy cognitive mapping
KW - learning
KW - participatory GIS
KW - participatory modeling
KW - public participation
KW - stakeholder collaboration
KW - system dynamics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85040238070&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85040238070&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/eap.1627
DO - 10.1002/eap.1627
M3 - Article
C2 - 28922513
AN - SCOPUS:85040238070
SN - 1051-0761
VL - 28
SP - 46
EP - 61
JO - Ecological Applications
JF - Ecological Applications
IS - 1
ER -