Perception and handling of uncertainties in water management—A study of practitioners’ and scientists’ perspectives on uncertainty in their daily decision-making

Uncertainties are central in any decision-making in water resource management. However, science and practice approach uncertainty handling and management in different ways. Science, for example, focuses on reducing uncertainties and/or places a good deal of emphasis on uncertainty quantification, while policy and practice apply risk-based decision approaches in order to cope with uncertainties throughout the entire management process. This study analyses how practitioners perceive and handle uncertainties in their daily decision-making routines at the knowledge/decision interface and how they evaluate and integrate uncertainty information into their decision-making. Expert interviews and questionnaires were used to examine and compare the practitioners’ and scientists’ perspectives on uncertainty management. Our results show that uncertainties matter for practitioners and that uncertainty information is regarded as highly relevant. However, scientists place more emphasis on uncertainties than practitioners. We further assert that there is a science-practice gap, where e.g. practitioners apply a bottom-up approach, thinking from potential measures upwards instead of impacts downwards. Scientists focus strongly on environmental uncertainties, while practitioners acknowledge and are guided by process uncertainties. Furthermore, rigid regulations in a predict-and-control manner hinder the implementation of flexible and adaptive management which acknowledge uncertainties. We also found that practitioners’ belonging to type of employer and business unit influences their level of uncertainty recognition and, hence, both affects the size of the science-practice gap and causes tension among practitioners from different business units and employers. Beside this gap, we show that the level of work experience is a cross-cutting property of scientist and practitioners, where uncertainty awareness and handling increases with work experience. This insight provides a basis on which to build routines for uncertainty integration into planning and decision-making and to bridge the science-practice gap.