Introduction to Actionable Science
Meeting modern environmental challenges like climate change requires new perspectives, approaches, collaborations and knowledge — and new ways of linking scholarship with society. One such way is by developing decision-relevant science — or actionable science — that can inform decisions to help fish, wildlife, water, land and people adapt to a changing climate.
Click on the expanding boxes below to learn more about developing actionable science and to find curated lists of relevant papers and webinars.
What is Actionable Science and Why Does it Matter for Climate Adaptation?
What is Actionable Science?
Moving away from the loading dock approach to developing science
The traditional and linear “loading-dock” approach to science involves a one-way transfer of information in which science is produced and handed off to society (usually in the form of a peer-reviewed paper) in hopes that it will be useful to a decision-maker. In reality, the decision-maker may never see it, or it might be irrelevant or difficult to apply to their decision-making context. Because of this, the one-way transfer of information is typically ineffective in generating science that is used.
Actionable science describes science that is used to inform decision-making and help solve real-world problems. Different from basic or foundational science that improves fundamental understanding of an area of study, actionable science is developed in response to a need for specific information to address practical problems.
In the context of big, complex social and ecological challenges like climate change, actionable science is needed to answer questions that can help decision-makers manage climate risks to protect our lands, waters, fish, wildlife and people in the face of ongoing change.
Examples of actionable science products developed by the University of Washington Climate Impacts Group, host of the NW CASC:
Interactive Sea Level Rise Data Visualizations
Tribal Vulnerability Assessment Resources and Tribal Climate Tool
Why is Actionable Science Valuable for Climate Adaptation?
Today’s big, hard problems, like adapting to climate change, require science that meets on-the-ground needs. Every day, people are making decisions around managing our natural and cultural resources that will affect our future resilience to climate change.
In order for local policy-makers, resource managers and communities to take action to help our region prepare for and adapt to ongoing change, they need decision-relevant climate science at the scales and on the topics that matter to the communities they represent. This can help decision-makers better understand the risks of climate change, evaluate tradeoffs of different adaptation approaches and prioritize actions. Additionally, sponsors are increasingly requiring science with demonstrated impact.
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What are Different Ways to Produce Actionable Science?
The traditional loading-dock approach to developing science, in which science is produced and handed off to society, has created a gap between the production and use of knowledge. This disconnect calls for new roles of science in society, in which there is more interaction between science production and use.
In looking at ways to better connect science and society, there is a spectrum of interaction between knowledge producers and users, in which scientists and other actors play different roles. Traditional scientists, having very limited interactions with knowledge users, fall on one side of this spectrum. Honest brokers sit in the middle of this spectrum. Honest brokers are usually from boundary organizations, which act as intermediaries between science and policy fields by facilitating collaboration and strengthening the flow of information between knowledge producers and knowledge users. Although honest brokers interact closely with societal actors in this conceptualization, they do not participate in the process of knowledge production. On the other end of this spectrum are scientists who work very closely with knowledge users, respectfully including their perspectives and blurring the traditional boundaries between science production and use.
E. Turnhout et al., 2013 There are a range of strategies for connecting science and decision-making. Some common strategies are listed here in order of increasing investment in relationship building and resource commitment.
Michaels, 2009 Resources:
How Do You Design a Co-Produced, Actionable Science Process?
1. Considerations Before Starting a Co-Produced Project
Before embarking on a collaborative actionable science project, it is important to account for the extra time and resources required to start and sustain an effective collaboration with partners. To help set realistic expectations about the process, consider the following:
- Your partners are likely to have important differences in timelines, values, culture, incentives, ways of knowing and definitions of evidence and certainty.
- Effective collaboration relies on having a respectful interest in how other people do their work.
- Co-production efforts often take significantly more time, funding and engagement than a traditional research process.
- The activities involved and products that result from a co-produced research process may not fit neatly into the incentives structures of your institution. For example, although there is pressure in academia to publish peer-reviewed literature, other outputs are likely to be valued by project partners.
- As scientists, we are not operating outside of society but embedded within it and need to recognize power structures that exist. To promote equity, it is very important to be aware of who is present at the table and receiving information and who is not present at the table but should be.
- A neutral, third-party facilitator can help prevent power dynamics from creating barriers to authentic engagement. For more information and ideas, see the Addressing Equity and Power Sharing in Actionable Science information further down this page.
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2. Creating a Science-Practice Collaboration
Finding partners and building relationships take time and energy but will lead to more robust and effective collaborative research. Consider the following tactics:
- Reach out to make connections with those in your field working on the other side of the science-practice divide. Think about attending workshops, conferences or other networking opportunities where you could learn about work happening on the other side of the divide and potentially meet future project partners.
- Trusting relationships are at the core of effective collaboration. Spend time listening, learning and showing up to build trust and rapport with new collaborators.
- Demonstrate respect to project partners and develop mutual understanding of the ways in which you and your partners perceive the topic at hand. Co-convening a workshop or conference session to discuss the topic of interest from the perspectives of both science and practice is one way to do this. This can help partners understand each other’s insights and concerns and can demonstrate ability to value multiple types of information.
- Be patient. Relationship building and mutual learning take time. You never know when conversations may come back around and yield opportunities.
- Be prepared to jump in quickly. There may be unexpected windows of opportunity (e.g., a climatic event related to your field of study or a political change that creates room for action) and it’s important to respond when an opportunity presents itself.
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3. Co-Defining a Problem to Address
Actionable science is focused on providing usable information that addresses socially-relevant problems and advances knowledge. This means that the best projects can be found where the knowledge gaps impeding improved decision-making or action overlap those that can be filled through new research.
- Researchers seeking to identify opportunities for actionable science related to an area of their scientific interest can begin by learning about the management contexts in which that issue is addressed. Researchers can ask questions such as:
- What decisions are being made (when, where and by whom)?
- Where do managers have the freedom to alter management approaches or actions by acting on new information?
- How do laws, regulations and policies influence decision-makers’ ability to incorporate new information or change procedures or actions?
- Work with management partners to set realistic expectations of what is possible and useful within the available time and budget.
- Learn about what success would look like for all parties (e.g., recognition, collaborative process, science products – peer-reviewed papers, outcomes – conservation decisions).
Resources:
Errett, N. A., H.A. Roop, C. Pendergrast, C.B. Kramer, A. Doubleday, K.A. Tran, et al. 2019. Building a practice-based research agenda for wildfire smoke and health: a report of the 2018 Washington Wildfire Smoke Risk Communication Stakeholder Synthesis Symposium. International journal of environmental research and public health16:2398.
- Researchers seeking to identify opportunities for actionable science related to an area of their scientific interest can begin by learning about the management contexts in which that issue is addressed. Researchers can ask questions such as:
4. Co-Designing the Process
Once you and your partners have determined your research questions, there are steps you can take throughout the research process to maintain positive interactions and avoid miscommunication.
- Refine research objectives with your project partners. Since your research objectives may change throughout the life of a project, it’s important to circle back with your partners at every step. Defining the objectives of a project should be an iterative process.
- Design a conceptual framework for knowledge exchange and integration. For each step of the research process, define who contributes what, who is supported by which means and to what end.
- Agree on ground rules regarding:
- data creation, utilization, ownership
- public and scholarly dissemination of information about the collaboration and the products
- Collaboratively decide on deadlines and make sure that everyone is clear about their roles and responsibilities.
- Discuss strategies for handling potential conflicts at the outset of the project.
- Revisit ground rules throughout the project.
Resources:
Jacobs, K. Connecting science, policy, and decision-making: a handbook for researchers and science agencies. 2002.Tucson, AZ: Climate Assessment for the Southwest.
5. Supporting the Use of Co-Produced Actionable Science
Although the products from a co-produced research process may include peer-reviewed publications, it can be beneficial to deliver new knowledge through formats such as maps, datasets, online tools, news pieces, workshops or ongoing collaborative efforts.
Discuss how partners intend to integrate and apply the co-created knowledge in both the science and practice communities.
- Into practice: implement evidence-based strategies and actions
- Into science: compare, generalize, incorporate results into the peer-reviewed literature
It’s important to follow up and revisit processes and outcomes with partners after the project to sustain long-term collaboration. Pick up the phone to check in and see whether partners have been able to use the new knowledge. Sometimes this will point out additional work that is needed. This ongoing interaction builds capacity for science-practice collaborations, as it helps scientists understand their partners’ decision-making contexts, priorities and constraints, which will help them learn to better co-formulate projects that are mutually beneficial.
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Actionable Science in Practice
NW CASC's Approach to Co-Producing Actionable Science
Supporting decision-relevant science to meet on-the-ground adaptation needs
The NW CASC produces actionable science on climate change impacts and adaptation actions for Northwest natural resource managers and policy-makers. We do this by supporting research that addresses stakeholder-defined priority science needs around impacts of climate change and variability in the Northwest.
The NW CASC’s Five-Year Science Agenda, which guides the science that we support, is developed in collaboration with the NW CASC Advisory Committee, which includes representatives of state and federal resource management agencies and Native American tribes located in the Northwest. In addition to helping develop the Science Agenda, the Committee meets regularly to help identify emerging science needs and priorities to ensure that NW CASC-funded science is ultimately useful, relevant and of value to regional management of cultural and natural resources.
In addition to supporting science aligned with our Science Agenda, the NW CASC organizes an annual actionable science Deep Dive into an emerging climate risk. We convene researchers, practitioners and students to assess the state of knowledge and practice associated with managing that risk. Each Deep Dive aims to facilitate community development of an Actionable Science Agenda that outlines knowledge gaps and research needs and identifies opportunities to advance adaptation by linking science and practice.
Meeting today’s climate adaptation needs by training a new type of scientist
Despite the need for decision-relevant science to solve today’s urgent climate challenges, many graduate programs still follow traditional academic approaches to developing science, in which science is produced independently from the complex, real-world contexts that managers face. The NW CASC Research Fellowship Program enables graduate students and postdocs from a variety of scientific backgrounds to develop decision-relevant science in collaboration with regional natural resource managers and decision-makers, while receiving training in the principles of actionable science.
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New Actionable Science Resources
Read the paperA new paper, co-authored by former NW CASC Actionable Science Postdoc Mary Ann Rozance, explores the process of becoming an actionable scientist. The author team used semi-structured interviews with scientists in the Climate Adaptation Science Center network to explore the competencies that comprise actionable science and how scientists develop this expertise over the course of a career.
What did they find? That doing actionable science requires substantial interpersonal expertise, which scientists can develop through participating within different communities and boundary-crossing organizations, contexts and settings throughout their careers.
What is Co-Production and How Can it Support Actionable Science?
Co-production describes the process of creating new knowledge through collaboration between scientists and those who use science to make policy and management decisions, with the intention of making the science usable (or actionable) in practice.
In a co-produced research process, researchers and decision-makers work together throughout the lifecycle of a project to identify a research question, design the research process and share the results. In a co-produced research process, communication is an ongoing part of the entire process, from a project’s initial stages through sharing results and beyond. Because the products of co-production are created with the knowledge, expertise and buy-in of decision-makers, they’re more likely to be useful and used.
The co-production process brings together different perspectives and different forms of knowledge to develop context-specific knowledge that lies at the boundary of science and decision-making.
Norstrom et al. 2020 Resources