Designing Decision - Making for NbS Implementation

In order to actually apply NbS, a decision-making process involving local residents must be properly designed. But how can we do that? Research that links urban planning and decision-making processes has great implications for the concrete design of decision-making processes. The importance of public participation procedures is argued from a philosophical perspective. NbS try to find better solutions to social problems, and so the decision-making procedures should be based on scientific findings. However, there are inherent difficulties in incorporating scientific findings into the discussion, especially when it is necessary to involve ordinary people.

The research presented here addresses this issue. Professor Misato Uehara of Shinshu University studied the discipline of art and engineering, which is based on environmental design. He consistently looks at the problem of how to successfully introduce scientific knowledge into society. For example, if a huge dyke is built based on scientific knowledge to prepare for a disaster far in the future, people will then have to live with that huge wall every day. Is that really what people want? Professor Uehara has been conducting research with the awareness that there is something wrong with the design based on scientific knowledge.

In one of his studies, he used the recovery process from the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 as a case study to ask how better decision-making in the recovery process is possible. One is a comparison between a bottom-up decision-making process in which the citizens' will is reflected in the selection of a place to live, and a top-down decision-making process in which the government obtains the consent of the citizens based on a preliminary plan. As a result, it was found that the former case, in which the decision was made bottom-up, was perceived as more valuable by the citizens. Uehara's research group concluded that “the result suggests that planning processes with low administrative agency and public participation tend to be more successful in producing an attractive redevelopment plan.”

In other research, recognizing the importance of flexible planning and consensus-building for issues related to climate change and natural disasters, we examined whether there is a difference in outcomes between using and not using the Swarm Planning decision-making design in a workshop on house relocation and seawall reconstruction, also following the Great East Japan Earthquake. Within Swarm Planning, a tool called the Centre for Development of Creative Thinking ("COCD") is used for group decision-making, providing a framework for comparing and contrasting opinions on house relocation and seawall reconstruction. When the proposals obtained through such an approach were compared with the traditional decision-making, the proposals obtained through Swarm Planning were evaluated as more attractive. In other words, the Swarm Planning process led to a thought process of deriving new solutions from conflicting opinions, which in turn led to flexible planning. In the future, when we have to design a society that faces the risks of climate change and complex disasters, we should consider using such tools to guide flexible decision-making.

The disaster recovery process described here is particularly linked to people's emotional issues, making it difficult to design a decision-making process. On the other hand, it is also true that some developing countries have their own unique challenges. For example, who should decide what to do with the lives of those who are forced to relocate their homes due to climate change? How can we pick up the perspective of the citizens who are involuntarily involved in the promotion of development policies? In some cases, decision-making may change drastically after a conflict or a change in the political system. Introducing NbS into society means changing the nature of society. Therefore, it is necessary to learn from such research on the design of decision-making and consider how to introduce NbS better. Research focusing on the design of decision-making has only just begun and it would be interesting to conduct similar research on familiar social issues in other countries.