Water Resources Research Act Program

Details for Project ID 2013CO289B

Social Network Anlysis Technique for Water Resources Management Workshop

Institute: Colorado
Year Established: 2013 Start Date: 2013-03-01 End Date: 2014-02-28
Total Federal Funds: $4,500 Total Non-Federal Funds: $2,183

Principal Investigators: John Labadie

Project Summary: Social network analysis (SNA) is a system for studying relationships between people, groups, organizations, and other entities, as well as, network flows of information and resources. The purpose of this CWI project will be to test SNA techniques, then develop materials to provide a Fall 2013 half-day workshop in Social Network Analysis Techniques for Water Resources Management. The SNA workshop will introduce interested Colorado State University (CSU) students and faculty in engineering, natural resources, agriculture, and other scientific disciplines to complimentary analysis for social aspects of their work and research through SNA principles and techniques. As part of the researcher’s dissertation entitled Decision Support System (DSS) for Adaptive Co-Management of Water and Environmental Resources, the author is developing semi-structured interviewing techniques and social network analysis (SNA) routines to define organizational ties, information and resource flows, and regulatory frameworks to better characterize the human dimensions of current conditions watershed-wide and to better plan diverse options to improve integrated water resources management (IWRM). In addition to social systems analysis, SNA will also serve as part of the DSS module for monitoring and assessment to analyze how management options that increase social network bridging ties, reduce network fragmentation, improve leadership measures of centrality, and increase in number and strength flows of resources and information work to improve sustainability and resilience of water resources management frameworks. In the student’s dissertation research, SNA techniques are embedded in a process of adaptive co-management (ACM), which combines the experiential knowledge-building process of adaptive management with the flexible, shared governance approach of co-management. An introduction to ACM will also be include as a components of the workshop, as would others SNA findings from select CSU faculty and student research, as well as, worldwide research in SNA applied to natural resources problems. The Social Networking Analysis Techniques for Water Resources Management workshop could be provided as part of the CWI Fall 2013 water resources seminar series or as a separate half-day workshop. CSU faculty in sociology and other departments with SNA expertise would be involved in workshop review prior to presentation. If a lab at the CSU campus could be found with UCINET software installed, for additional preparation costs, the workshop could also be expanded to a full-day to include practical UCINET lab practice in the latter portion.