Doing science differently?: the case of flood risk modelling
Event details
| Date | 02.03.2009 |
| Hour | 16:15 |
| Speaker | Prof. Stuart Lane, Durham University |
| Location |
GR B30
|
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Models represent a peculiar form of scientific knowledge because their primary raison d'etre rests in the difficulties of acquiring certain sorts of understandings through conventional scientific practice (e.g. measurement). Indeed, models are commonly seen as sets of mathematically-encoded theoretical statements which, when combined with additional auxiliary information, allow statements to be made about things that have not been observed (e.g. future flood risk). The tension arises between models as research tools, to be disproved or shown as wrong, and models in practice, aa policy tools necessary to help get decisions right. Flood risk modelling represents a particular severe example of this tension because it is an increasingly public practice, one which has opened up to scrutiny the predictions of flood risk models by a community for whom flood risk modelling makes a material difference: those who live with flood risk; ordinary people. In this presentation, I will show how conventional models for the practice of science fail in such situations where the science becomes public and, in some cases, controversial. Those who live with flood risk can, in many cases, posess expert knowledge of the sort that is normally made inadmissible to the routine practice of scientific enquiry. Rather than being seen as an integral part of scientific practice, they are excluded from this practice, only to be brought back in, to be educated and persuaded as to the validity of the work that has been done. I will show how this approach is fundamentally flawed, advocating the need to move towards a much more radical form of scientific practice in which trust in flood risk models can only be gained through the active involvement in the research process of thise who have to live with flood risk.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Contact
- A. Berne