Translating community narratives into semi-quantitative models to understand the dynamics of socio-environmental crises

Tools and methods in participatory modeling: Selecting the right tool for the job

“…In a PM context, this allows stakeholders to contrast and compare the effect of different scenarios or evaluate the effectiveness of different management interventions in a given a socio-environmental problem (see Gray et al, 2015). Second, an FCM can be constructed in many ways, providing a way to combine the experiences or expertise of several individuals with various qualitative data sources (see for examples Singer et al, 2017). For instance, individuals can share their experiences and understandings, and these can be aggregate to create a group-level map (Gray et al, 2014).…”

“…By 2016, thousands of Flint residents had been exposed to unsafe levels of lead in their drinking water, and the governor of Michigan had declared a state of emergency (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016). A modeling team from Michigan State University was asked by the Community Foundation of Greater Flint to conduct a modeling exercise to capture the voices and views of Flint residents around the causes and consequences of, and potential solutions to, the Flint Water Crisis (hereafter referred to as the Water Crisis) (Gray et al, 2017;Singer et al, 2017). The goal of this exercise was to represent Flint resident views in a manner that could be communicated to city leadership and to the state-appointed team in charge of developing a response to the Water Crisis.…”

Rethinking Tiebout: The Contribution of Political Fragmentation and Racial/Economic Segregation to the Flint Water Crisis

“…The crisis formally began in April 2014, when a state-appointed emergency manager and staff-in a bid to cut costs in this financially strapped city-opted to use the highly corrosive Flint River as the city's water source without implementing proper corrosion control, causing lead and other dangerous contaminants from the city's aging water pipes to leach into the water supply. 1 Investigations conducted in the wake of the citywide lead exposure leave little room Dr. Sadler is an assistant professor in the Division of Public Health, Michigan State University, Flint, Michigan. Dr. Highsmith is an assistant professor in the Department of History, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California. for doubt that the Flint Water Crisis (FWC) is, in large measure, a product of severe government mismanagement.…”

A Cybernetic Participatory Approach for Whole-Systems Modelling and Analysis, with Application to Inclusive Economies

“…In this study, FCM is the preferred choice for developing a systems map based on group of experts' knowledge. That is chiefly because it is relatively quick and easy to populate and parameterize from varied sources of qualitative knowledge [43] with flexibility in representation (as more components are added to the system) [44], modest time investment, and a degree of transparency to non-technical experts [22, Table 1]. Comparing to conceptual mapping techniques such as CLD, FCM allows more resolution on the nature of links [45] which can be used to quantify and analyze structural dynamics of the system across individual or groups of participants [46].…”

“…There are many software tools (both open-source and commercial) for modelling and analysis of FCMs [50]. Examples include FCM designer [51], Mental Modeler [43], OCAM (Online Cognitive Automatic Mapper) [52], FCM Expert [53], Cofluences [54], and the commercial Kumu®. Amongst them, Mental Modeler and Kumu currently both allow web-based collaborative modelling and limited network analysis but comparing to the former, Kumu represents better functionality for modelling large complex maps (with many nodes and numerous links) with flexibility in tagging data to nodes and links, displaying intended causal pathways, and making separate comments (and associating them to the point in the map), which can be used and maintained by individual users after the workshop.…”