Actionable Knowledge is generated in collaboration between scientists and stakeholders. It strengthens the ability to act and effectively meet climate-friendly and resilient needs.
Dealing With Uncertainties
Dealing with uncertainties is a crucial aspect of sustainability research, which addresses complex environmental, social and economic challenges. Inherent uncertainties pose obstacles to accurate predictions and decision-making processes. In the context of sustainability research, it is therefore essential to consider various uncertainty factors and their interdependencies. These include, for example, sea levels rise and extreme weather events as impacts of climate change, as well as population growth and land use changes.
The transdisciplinary research of the SURE collaborative projects plays a significant role in this context. The cooperation between scientists and practitioners enables a more holistic and prudent approach to uncertainties in sustainability research. This includes integrating different knowledge communities to address complex sustainability issues, develop comprehensive solutions, and promote legitimacy and accountability among researchers and non-academic actors. For this reason, a mixed-methods approach is used (e.g., in MYrisk) by collecting quantitative and qualitative data and combining them. The gained information are analyzed in transdisciplinary workshops to develop a holistic risk management concept. Managing climate-related risks generates decision making under uncertainty, which requires future risk scenarios and decision support systems to assess uncertainties and adapt response measures thanks to complex information models (e.g., in FloodAdaptVN). The measures contribute to improving the management of multiple risks and thus the handling of uncertainties in urban regions.