Suchergebnisse

The environmental management and planning community is struggling with a gap between knowledge and policy making. To bridge this gap, 'decision support systems', 'planning support systems', and other computer tools have been developed to make knowledge about complex issues more accessible for policy makers. However, the use of these systems in practice is limited. One major reason for this is that these systems are designed for well-defined problems, whereas in practice there is often a lack of stakeholder consensus on the problem structure. The aim of this paper is to present, and explore the potential of, a new approach for decision and planning support. The Quasta tool aims at facilitating participatory problem structuring through computer-supported cognitive mapping. The tool, allowing qualitative exploration of scenarios and simultaneous forecasting and backcasting, is tested in four participatory problem-structuring workshops, in which various environmental issues have been discussed. Evaluations of these workshops show that this approach (1) helps stakeholders to become aware of causal relationships, (2) is useful for a qualitative exploration of scenarios, (3) identifies the need for further (in-depth) knowledge, and (4) has a low threshold for nontechnicians.

ABSTRACTSustainable development issues are characterised by their multidisciplinary character, and the fact they are not merely an academic exercise but pertain to real‐world problems. Academic sustainable development curricula should therefore not only focus on developing the analytical and research skills and theoretical and professional knowledge of their students; they should also include real‐world learning opportunities in the curriculum. This paper evaluates the added value and constraints associated with a specific type of real‐world learning called transdisciplinary learning, based on the experiences with three courses from the undergraduate and graduate Environmental Sciences curriculum of Utrecht University, the Netherlands. In these courses, students carry out a small multidisciplinary research project or a consultancy project for a real‐life client. It is concluded that transdisciplinary courses have clear added value for students, involved stakeholders, and the university alike, making them an essential part of the sustainable development curricula. The main constraint is the balance between academic quality (grading) vs stakeholder satisfaction. Although time investments for adequate problem definition with clients may constitute a constraint for university supervisors, it has the potential added value of sparking research cooperation with societal stakeholders, and internships and employment opportunities for graduates. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.