the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 02 Jun 2025
Transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge for effective flood risk management
Abstract. Flood risks represent one of the most pressing global challenges, exacerbated by factors such as climate change, urbanization, and land use changes. Effective flood risk management (FRM) faces significant challenges, including the need for robust decision-making, addressing existing risks, and implementing strategies across the disaster risk reduction (DRR) cycle. This paper highlights the role of transdisciplinary (TD) research in tackling these challenges, particularly through the co-production of knowledge between scientific and non-scientific actors. Specific characteristics and requirements for flood risk research, which should be considered in TD research, are described. The paper explores three main objectives: (1) illustrating a methodological design for TD research in flood risk research, (2) applying and expanding the framework of impact generation mechanisms in knowledge co-production, and (3) reflecting on the lessons learned from North-South collaboration in flood risk research. The findings are based on and illustrated with the approach, methods and tools applied and exemplified by a flood risk research project in Ghana, the PARADeS project. The results demonstrate that key mechanisms, such as promoting systems knowledge, fostering social learning, and enhancing leadership competencies, are critical for generating impact. Additionally, mediators like joint research formulation, trust-building, and anchoring project results were identified as essential for effective implementation and sustainable transformation towards effective DRR. The study concludes that a combination of these mechanisms and mediators, applied contextually, can significantly enhance the effectiveness of flood risk management strategies and contribute to the development of tailored, context-sensitive approaches.
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-2288', Susanne Hanger-Kopp, 08 Aug 2025
Dear authors,
I appreciate the work you describe in the manuscript, as I consider TDR very important and it is crucial to reflect on these processes. I find it extremely useful that you align flood risk research components with practical TDR advice. Moreover, the article made me very curious about the project; it seems you have had a privileged opportunity to conduct TDR research. However, I do have some concerns that I believe need to be resolved prior to publication.First, reporting and reflecting on a transdisciplinary research project in Ghana without involving Ghanaian partners in these reflections (co-authorship) seems inappropriate given the pluralism and inclusiveness prerogative of knowledge co-production.
Second, I miss a clear research gap identified in the introduction that highlights the concrete contribution of the paper vis-à-vis the literature you describe. You write that you expand upon a research area aiming to address three objectives, but those, in comparison with the brief state of the art, are not indicative of the relevance of your contribution.
Third, the rationale of the state of the art remains unclear to me vis-à-vis the reflections you promise. You spend a lot of space on the characteristics of flood research and North–South collaboration, but barely introduce your key component of reflections later—the impact mediators.
Similarly, you barely focus on the framework you introduce (Figure 1), even though you propose this to be an innovation that could be used in similar work. (This leads back to the lack of introducing a research gap and reviewing other TDR frameworks.)
Fourth, in your reflections you describe the methods you use in the project vis-à-vis ensuring the impact. Given that your aim is to reflect on TDR and knowledge co-production, I would like to see much more detail about how you actually managed the equal partnership, the trust-building, and ongoing reflections. I am missing this throughout. E.g., you mention that you organized exchanges between countries and people at different levels, and joint field visits that created mutual understanding at eye level, or you mention a TD team at some point, and community discussions elsewhere. All of this sounds great but does not tell us how you made sure that this actually created trust and a feeling of equality, and how it enhanced learning. Reading about a TDR project, continuous reflection is crucial, but there is little to no information about this in the manuscript at the moment.
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RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-2288', Anonymous Referee #2, 11 Aug 2025
Dear authors
Thanks a lot for your super interesting paper with the title “Transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge for effective flood risk management”, which I think really suits to the NHESS journal. However, I have some questions and suggestions, which might be relevant and interesting for your paper. First of all, I would like to ask you can you provide a definition of how you define co-production; knowledge; social learning; and institutional capacities (difference to social capacity). Secondly, what’s actually your theoretical framework you used for your study? At the moment, it’s a little bit unclear about the main used theoretical concept. Another question is: what’s actually new – or what we don’t know so far from TD projects across the globe; especially section 3.2.2. is something we already know and discuss for many years in different TD projects across the globe. How you deal with the challenge of North-South collaboration; especially in the sense of the ongoing decolonial discourse in different disciplines? An important question of TD projects lies on the question about the impact: what’s the actual impact of the project and second question lies on the long-term perspective of the TD process within the region; are there any hints for a long-term/institutionalised living lab in the region? Or does the TD process end with the project? Another question reflects how are non-scientific actors involved within the overall research process, such as framing problem, analyzing problem, exploring impact; how you integrate both realm (science and practice) within you project? How did you organise and manage the reflection process within the project and can you extend this part within your paper (results section)? Finally, I would like to ask you what’s actually new of your paper in terms of theoretical discourse as well as methodologically in sense of TD research.
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-2288-RC2
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