Policies that guide management of energy and earth resources are enmeshed in complex, dynamic conditions that involve understanding from across multiple disciplines or practices. Most often the knowledge that scientists and engineers have developed through years of research, is not communicated to the communities and policymakers who need it.
The majority of activities to date for the ENCOMPASS project have involved establishing relationships, strengthening existing interactions, and implementing pilot versions of data collection, hosting, and diffusion. The pilot project is located in the Atacama Desert of Chile and combines social science data collection using handheld devices with interactive delivery of scientific information via a cyberinfrastructure and multi-touchscreen for participatory modeling. Field testing at the El Tatio geothermal site and two playa lake basins demonstrated collection of in situ datasets for hydrology and qualitative interviews using the handheld equipment. These data are uploaded to the cyberinfrastructure for use by research teams for analysis or sharing for educational purposes. Follow-on work has developed sustained dialogue sessions with indigenous community members from across four regions in the altiplano of Chile using information from the cyberinfrastructure.
Science can contribute to the topic of water and energy resource allocation by providing information about the workings of these systems and creating tools to quantify impacts or beneficial aspects of development. Yet, tools alone cannot deliver adequate decision support for the complex, ill-structured, and dynamic problems. To address the needs for application of science and planning, decision makers and community stakeholders need both computational tools or models and soft systems methodologies to support dialogue and deliberative processes to assist with the evaluation and presentation of resource management alternatives. Cyberinfrastructure platforms, like Encompass, successfully engage globally and enable advances in transparency and interactivity between science and society.