WHY?
Our mission or what's so special about what we want to do
There is an increasing number of models that are developed for environmental assessment and management. The models become more complex, better calibrated, perform faster, offer better visualization techniques. Yet, the use of these models in real life policies and decision making is still quite episodic. There seems to be a gap between what the scientific community can offer in terms of tools and methods, and what the decision makers are ready to absorb.
We feel that the best way to resolve the problem is to try to integrate the modeling directly into the decision making process. As scientists we know that we learn so much more about the system while we model it than when we run an existing model. How can we share this excitment of learning and understanding the system with the stakeholders and decision makers?
On the other hand we also know that the modeling process can be a rough and long road, which in most cases will be hard for the stakeholders to take. There is always much to learn. There are multiple disciplines involved. We are mostly dealing with dynamic, spatially explicit systems. What are the tools that can help us understand and model such systems? How should we package our models and modeling frameworks to make them most useful for broader applications?
Finally, if we agree that the modeling process is what is most useful about modeling, we need to design this process to better suit the stakeholder needs. How do we orchestrate and frame the modeling process to meet the needs of diverse user groups and research goals? What are the tools and software needed to facilitate this process?
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