Research Theme: Methodology

Methodological innovation is required to move beyond knowledge fragmentation and address societal challenges and build resilience. Our ‘Methodology’ theme is rooted in the idea of resilience as increased engagement and empowerment. For this reason, we will design and develop methods and processes to bring together diverse scientific disciplines, academic and non-academic (public and private) partners, taking residents along in a co-creation process, defined in our programme as Organising Convergence.

At the same time, there are fundamental methodological challenges inherent in the interplay of the different environmental, technological and social systems in the Delta. This requires us to use a System Science perspective that aims at understanding the feedback between different systems at different spatial levels and temporal scales. This interdependence raises many interesting, yet complex questions: how, for example, to combine our bottom-up understanding of human behaviour, social networks and decisions with macro-level processes, and the co-evolution of eco-systems, infrastructure and institutions, how to measure resilience within and across the physical/natural, built/technical and social systems separately, and how to establish integrated measures from this. How do we translate our findings into practice?