An alternative approach for socio-hydrology: case study research

Mostert, Erik

doi:10.5194/hess-22-317-2018

Cited by 53 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 65 publications

(95 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…(Wesselink et al, 2016). Therefore, in line with Mostert (2018), we suggest adding a grounded component to socio-hydrology, in which the field, with its social, cultural, political, ecological, and physical components, consistently challenges the research choices. The research questions originate in the field, the perspectives of each discipline start from and interact through the field and the results are relevant to the field.…”

Section: Discussion and Conclusion: Confronting The Social And The Hymentioning

confidence: 76%

“…It is a major scientific challenge to account for human interactions with water systems, but we argue that the way this is done also matters. Alternatives to modeling social dynamics-doomed to be a long and painstaking task-exist for specific case studies (see also Mostert, 2018). But this implies accepting that it will be necessary to leave part of the analysis outside the modeling platform.…”

Section: 1002/2017wr021691mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A seminal paper on socio-hydrology written by Sivapalan et al (2012) and endorsed by the declaration for the 2013-2022 IAHS Panta Rhei scientific decade (Montanari et al, 2013) proposed to improve the ''capability to make predictions of water resources dynamics to support sustainable societal development in a changing environment.'' Various water-related issues were then addressed by socio-hydrological studies, from flooding to collapse of civilizations, predominantly using modeling approaches (Mostert, 2018). In 2016, Blair and Buytaert published a review of ''socio-hydrology as a discipline'' and discussed the ''reasons for modeling.''…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Inspiring a Broader Socio‐Hydrological Negotiation Approach With Interdisciplinary Field‐Based Experience

Massuel

Riaux

Molle

et al. 2018

Water Resources Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Socio‐hydrology advanced the field of hydrology by considering humans and their activities as part of the water cycle, rather than as external drivers. Models are used to infer reproducible trends in human interactions with water resources. However, defining and handling water problems in this way may restrict the scope of such modeling approaches. We propose an interdisciplinary socio‐hydrological approach to overcome this limit and complement modeling approaches. It starts from concrete field‐based situations, combines disciplinary as well as local knowledge on water‐society relationships, with the aim of broadening the hydrocentric analysis and modeling of water systems. The paper argues that an analysis of social dynamics linked to water is highly complementary to traditional hydrological tools but requires a negotiated and contextualized interdisciplinary approach to the representation and analysis of socio‐hydro systems. This reflection emerged from experience gained in the field where a water‐budget modeling framework failed to adequately incorporate the multiplicity of (nonhydrological) factors that determine the volumes of withdrawals for irrigation. The pathway subsequently explored was to move away from the hydrologic view of the phenomena and, in collaboration with social scientists, to produce a shared conceptualization of a coupled human‐water system through a negotiated approach. This approach changed the way hydrological research issues were addressed and limited the number of strong assumptions needed for simplification in modeling. The proposed socio‐hydrological approach led to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind local water‐related problems and to debates on the interactions between social and political decisions and the dynamics of these problems.

show abstract

Section: Discussion and Conclusion: Confronting The Social And The Hymentioning

confidence: 76%

Section: 1002/2017wr021691mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Inspiring a Broader Socio‐Hydrological Negotiation Approach With Interdisciplinary Field‐Based Experience

Massuel

Riaux

Molle

et al. 2018

Water Resources Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The study of floodplains using a socio-hydrological approach has advanced rapidly in the last few years (Di Baldassarre et al, 2013aBaldassarre et al, , b, 2015O'Connell and O'Donnell, 2014;Viglione et al, 2014;Chen et al, 2016;Grames et al, 2016;Ciullo et al, 2017;Barendrecht et al, 2017;Yu et al, 2017). In this research, the two responses to flooding "fight" and "adapt" take centre stage.…”

mentioning

confidence: 92%

Socio-hydrological spaces in the Jamuna River floodplain in Bangladesh

Ferdous

Wesselink

Brandimarte

et al. 2018

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. Socio-hydrology aims to understand the dynamics and co-evolution of coupled human–water systems, with research consisting of generic models as well as specific case studies. In this paper, we propose a concept to help bridge the gap between these two types of socio-hydrological studies: socio-hydrological spaces (SHSs). A socio-hydrological space is a geographical area in a landscape. Its particular combination of hydrological and social features gives rise to the emergence of distinct interactions and dynamics (patterns) between society and water. Socio-hydrological research on human–flood interactions has found two generic responses, “fight” or “adapt”. Distilling the patterns resulting from these responses in case studies provides a promising way to relate contextual specificities to the generic patterns described by conceptual models. Through the use of SHSs, different cases can be compared globally without aspiring to capturing them in a formal model. We illustrate the use of SHS for the Jamuna floodplain, Bangladesh. We use narratives and experiences of local experts and inhabitants to empirically describe and delimit SHS. We corroborated the resulting classification through the statistical analysis of primary data collected for the purpose (household surveys and focus group discussions) and secondary data (statistics, maps etc.). Our example of the use of SHSs shows that the concept draws attention to how historical patterns in the co-evolution of social behaviour, natural processes and technological interventions give rise to different landscapes, different styles of living and different ways of organising livelihoods. This provides a texture to the more generic patterns generated by socio-hydrological models, promising to make the resulting analysis more directly useful for decision makers. We propose that the usefulness of this concept in other floodplains, and for other socio-hydrological systems than floodplains, should be explored.

show abstract

“…The study of floodplains using a socio-hydrological approach has advanced rapidly in the last few years (Di Baldassarre et al, 2013a, b, 2015O'Connell and O'Donnell, 2014;Viglione et al, 2014;Chen et al, 2016;Grames et al, 2016;Ciullo et al, 2017;Barendrecht et al, 2017;Yu et al, 2017). In this research, the two responses to flooding "fight" and "adapt" take centre stage.…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

response to reviewer #3

Ferdous¹

2018

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Socio-hydrology aims to understand the dynamics and co-evolution of coupled human-water systems, with research consisting of generic models as well as specific case studies. In this paper, we propose a concept to help bridge the gap between these two types of socio-hydrological studies: socio-hydrological spaces (SHSs). A socio-hydrological space is a geographical area in a landscape. Its particular combination of hydrological and social features gives rise to the emergence of distinct interactions and dynamics (patterns) between society and water. Socio-hydrological research on human-flood interactions has found two generic responses, "fight" or "adapt". Distilling the patterns resulting from these responses in case studies provides a promising way to relate contextual specificities to the generic patterns described by conceptual models. Through the use of SHSs, different cases can be compared globally without aspiring to capturing them in a formal model. We illustrate the use of SHS for the Jamuna floodplain, Bangladesh. We use narratives and experiences of local experts and inhabitants to empirically describe and delimit SHS. We corroborated the resulting classification through the statistical analysis of primary data collected for the purpose (household surveys and focus group discussions) and secondary data (statistics, maps etc.). Our example of the use of SHSs shows that the concept draws attention to how historical patterns in the co-evolution of social behaviour, natural processes and technological in-terventions give rise to different landscapes, different styles of living and different ways of organising livelihoods. This provides a texture to the more generic patterns generated by socio-hydrological models, promising to make the resulting analysis more directly useful for decision makers. We propose that the usefulness of this concept in other floodplains, and for other socio-hydrological systems than floodplains, should be explored.

show abstract

An alternative approach for socio-hydrology: case study research

Cited by 53 publications

References 65 publications

Inspiring a Broader Socio‐Hydrological Negotiation Approach With Interdisciplinary Field‐Based Experience

Inspiring a Broader Socio‐Hydrological Negotiation Approach With Interdisciplinary Field‐Based Experience

Socio-hydrological spaces in the Jamuna River floodplain in Bangladesh

response to reviewer #3

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About