Challenging problem narratives through modeling

What is it about?

Narratives play instrumental roles in defining how the causes of problems are understood, and what policy solutions are pursued. Narratives are often unquestioned, accepted as common knowledge, although they may poorly capture the drivers and outcomes of social and environmental change. We elicited stakeholders’ mental models, to identify collective narratives about the causes and consequences of flood risk and water scarcity in Mexico City. We challenged these narratives by representing them as scenarios in an exploratory model of hydrological risk and vulnerability. By making the implications of narratives visible, stakeholders considered novel solutions to risk management. Stakeholders learned how their narratives were driving risk in the city, such that the model itself served as a lever of change.

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Photo by Dibakar Roy on Unsplash

Photo by Dibakar Roy on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Scientists often accept how stakeholder frame problems as given, using those problem frames -- represented as narratives about the world -- to seek solutions. Nevertheless, these narratives are in themselves often the barrier to transformative change. This work not only provides a method and approach to represent stakeholders' problem framings in a dynamic model of social-hydrological risk in Mexico City, but then uses that model to challenge those framings. The research illustrates how modeling can be an effective tool for learning, enabling stakeholders to question deeply-held assumptions.