Abstract
Evidence-based environmental management requires data that are sufficient, accessible, useful and used. A mismatch between data, data systems, and data needs for decision making can result in inefficient and inequitable capital investments, resource allocations, environmental protection, hazard mitigation, and quality of life. In this paper, we examine the relationship between data and decision making in environmental management, with a focus on water management. We focus on the concept of decision-driven data systems—data systems that incorporate an assessment of decision-makers' data needs into their design. The aim of the research was to examine the process of translating data into effective decision making by engaging stakeholders in the development of a water data system. Using California's legislative mandate for state agencies to integrate existing water and other environmental data as a case study, we developed and applied a participatory approach to inform data-system design and identify unmet data needs. Using workshops and focused stakeholder meetings, we developed 20 diverse use cases to assess data sources, availability, characteristics, gaps, and other attributes of data used for representative decisions. Federal and state agencies made up about 90% of the data sources, and could readily adapt to a federated data system, our recommended model for the state. The remaining 10% of more-specialized data, central to important decisions across multiple use cases, would require additional investment or incentives to achieve data consistency, interoperability, and compatibility with a federated system. Based on this assessment, we propose a typology of different types of data limitations and gaps described by stakeholders. We also propose technical, governance, and stakeholder engagement evaluation criteria to guide planning and building environmental data systems. Data-system governance involving both producers and users of data was seen as essential to achieving workable standards, stable funding, convenient data availability, resilience to institutional change, and long-term buy-in by stakeholders. Our work provides a replicable lesson for using decision-maker and stakeholder engagement to shape the design of an environmental data system, and inform a technical design that addresses both user and producer needs.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 761444 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Climate |
| Volume | 3 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Nov 17 2021 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
This work was supported by the University of California Office of the President (UCOP), through the UC Water Security and Sustainability Research Initiative (UCOP Grant No. 13941), and by the Water Foundation. Support for SH was provided by U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research under Award Number DE-AC02-05CH1123. An earlier report on this study, including a complete description of the California use case development process can be found in a 2018 report written by the authors of this article and published as a report by UC Berkeley School of Law, Center for Law, Energy & the Environment. The 2018 report is available at https://doi.org/10.15779/J28H01. Thanks to the workshop participants, facilitators, and use case contributors for sharing their time and expertise. We thank workshop sponsors, including the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST), UC Water, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the California Department of Water Resources, and the Water Foundation, Leigh Bernacchi, Luke Sherman, and Amber Mace for assistance in organizing the workshops, John Helly, Richard Roos-Collins, Holly Doremus, and Nell Green Nylen for discussions on the concepts presented in this paper, and reviewers for helpful comments on versions of this paper. We define “data systems” broadly as the assemblage of hardware, software, people, and institutions that collect, organize, archive, distribute, integrate, process, analyze, and synthesize data and information. There are a growing number of efforts that seek to advance earth and environmental data systems through integration and collaboration in order to maximize applicability to both research and decision making. For example, National Science Foundation (NSF) has supported Hydroshare, a collaborative environment for sharing hydrologic and critical-zone data and models geared toward research users. In the European Union, the INSPIRE Directive seeks to create a spatial-data infrastructure to inform E.U. environmental policies, and the Copernicus project focuses on meeting earth-science data-user needs. Copernicus developers have created a use case library demonstrating how data are applied to real-world problem solving.
Keywords
- California
- data systems
- environmental decision making
- stakeholder engagement
- water management