Participatory modelling for networking interventions in NBS design and implementation

Description

Whether a Nature Based Solution is implemented depends less on its technical quality than on whether the actors who have to act together actually do so. This model addresses that directly: it maps the network of interactions between the decision actors involved in NBS design, and identifies where the network is failing.

The approach integrates two methods. Social Network Analysis locates the nodes that occupy a structural position from which a change would propagate — the actors whose involvement, or whose absence, determines whether the network functions. The Fuzzy Cognitive Map then determines the kind of intervention that should be made at those nodes, by simulating how a change in the relationship between two actors alters the behaviour of the system as a whole.

The result is a set of networking interventions: specific, targeted changes in who interacts with whom, which the analysis indicates would act as leverage points for the implementation of the measures. The approach was developed and tested at the Medina del Campo demonstration site.

Applications to decision making in the insurance sector

Bringing a risk carrier into a catchment's risk management is itself a networking intervention: it creates a relationship that did not exist and changes how the other actors behave as a result. This approach provides a way of assessing in advance whether adding that relationship would strengthen the network or complicate it, and which existing actor is the right point of contact.

Added value of this modelling approach

It identifies why implementation stalls. The analysis at the demonstration sites showed that ineffective interaction networks — not a shortage of measures, money or evidence — were a principal barrier to NBS implementation, which locates the problem where it can be addressed.

What decision can be improved with this modelling approach

Which actors to bring into a process and in what role; where a coordinating function would have the most effect; and whether a partnership that looks attractive on paper would in practice strengthen the network that has to deliver the measure.