Inclusive, participatory governance is a key enabler of effective responses to natural hazard risks exacerbated by climate change. This paper describes a community-level co-design process among academic, state, and federal scientists and the community of Sitka, Alaska to develop a novel landslide warning system for this small coastal town. The decentralized system features an online dashboard which displays current and forecast risk levels to help residents make their own risk management decisions. The system and associated risk communications are informed by new geoscience, social, and information science generated during the course of the project. This case study focuses on our project team's activities and addresses questions including: what activities did the project team conduct, what did these activities intend to accomplish, and did these activities accomplish what they intended? The paper describes the co-design process, the associated changes in system design and research activities, and formal and informal evaluations of the system and process. Overall, the co-design process appears to have generated a warning system the Sitka community finds valuable, helped to align system design with local knowledge and community values, significantly modified the scientists' research agendas, and helped navigate sensitivities such as the effect of landslide exposure maps on property values. Other communities in SE Alaska are now adopting this engagement approach. The paper concludes with broader implications for the role of community-level, participatory co-design and risk governance for climate services.

Risk AnalysisVolume 41, Issue 6 p. 874-877 Response On Model Pluralism and the Utility of Quantitative Decision Support Robert Lempert, Corresponding Author Robert Lempert lempert@rand.org Pardee Center on Longer Range Global Policy, RAND, Santa Monica, CA, USA Address correspondence to Robert Lempert, Pardee Center on Longer Range Global Policy, RAND, 1776 Main St, Santa Monica, CA, 90407, USA; lempert@rand.orgSearch for more papers by this authorSara Turner, Sara Turner Pardee RAND Graduate School, RAND, Santa Monica, CA, USASearch for more papers by this author Robert Lempert, Corresponding Author Robert Lempert lempert@rand.org Pardee Center on Longer Range Global Policy, RAND, Santa Monica, CA, USA Address correspondence to Robert Lempert, Pardee Center on Longer Range Global Policy, RAND, 1776 Main St, Santa Monica, CA, 90407, USA; lempert@rand.orgSearch for more papers by this authorSara Turner, Sara Turner Pardee RAND Graduate School, RAND, Santa Monica, CA, USASearch for more papers by this author First published: 25 June 2021 https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.13747Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume41, Issue6June 2021Pages 874-877 RelatedInformation

Many of today's most pressing policy challenges are usefully characterized as wicked problems. With contested framings parties to a decision disagree not only on potential solutions, but on the nature of the problem they are trying to solve. The quantitative tools of risk and policy analysis, commonly designed to develop and compare choices within a single decision framing, are poorly designed to bring quantitative information into debates with contested framings. This study aims to build on recent advances in decision making under deep uncertainty (DMDU) to demonstrate methods and tools that may help resolve the tension between quantitative decision support and multiworldview approaches for addressing wicked problems. The study employs robust decision making (RDM), one common DMDU method, and a new version of the lake model, a simple and widely used model of a coupled human and natural system, to conduct a stylized analysis that reflects three different worldviews. The RDM analysis solves the decision challenge independently for each worldview and then compares each set of solutions from the vantage of the other worldviews. The resulting utopia-dystopia matrix informs problem reframing that seeks robust, adaptive strategies independently consistent with each worldview and thus provides a locus for agreement. The study describes how stakeholder engagements might use such analytic tools and their information products to provide overlapping but alternative entry points for groups with fundamentally different worldviews to engage with each other in deliberative processes appropriate for wicked problems.