Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.

This is a qualitative data collection. The study is part of the Rural Economy and Land Use (RELU) programme. This project was conceived in order to address the public controversies generated by the risk management strategies and forecasting technologies associated with diffuse environmental problems such as flooding and pollution. Environmental issues play an ever-increasing role in all of our daily lives. However, controversies surrounding many of these issues, and confusion surrounding the way in which they are reported, mean that sectors of the public risk becoming increasingly disengaged. To try to reverse this trend and regain public trust and engagement, this project aimed to develop a new approach to interdisciplinary environmental science, involving non-scientists throughout the process. Examining the relationship between science and policy, and in particular how to engage the public with scientific research findings, a major diffuse environmental management issue was chosen as a focus - flooding. As part of this approach, non-scientists were recruited alongside the investigators in forming Competency Groups - an experiment in democratising science. The Competency Groups were composed of researchers and laypeople for whom flooding is a matter of particular concern. The groups worked together to share different perspectives - on why flooding is a problem, on the role of science in addressing the problem, and on new ways of doing science together. We aimed to achieve four substantive contributions to knowledge: 1. To analyse how the knowledge claims and modelling technologies of hydrological science are developed and put into practice by policy makers and commercial organisations (such as insurance companies) in flood risk management.2. To develop an integrated model for forecasting the in-river and floodplain effects of rural land management practices.3. To experiment with a new approach to public engagement in the production of interdisciplinary environmental science, involving the use of Competency Groups.4. To evaluate this new approach to doing public science differently and to identify lessons learnt that can be exported beyond this particular project to other fields of knowledge controversy. Interviews were carried out with computer flood modelling practitioners from both academic and consultancy backgrounds. Select stakeholders in the Ryedale (North Yorkshire) flooding controversy were also interviewed. Proprietary model scripts for flood risk modelling from this study are available at the Environmental Information Data Centre of the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. Further information for this study may be found through the ESRC Research Catalogue webpage: Understanding environmental knowledge controversies: the case of flood risk management.

Main Topics:

Interdisciplinarity, knowledge controversy, flooding, environmental managment, science and policy, public engagement

Purposive selection/case studies

Face-to-face interview