the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 25 Feb 2025
HESS Opinions: Reflecting and acting on the social aspects of modelling
Abstract. Within hydrological modelling, a persistent notion exists that a model is a neutral, objective tool. However, this notion has several, potentially harmful, consequences, such as marginalising certain stakeholders. In the critical social sciences, the non-neutrality in methods and research results is an established topic of debate. Thus we propose that in order to deal with it in hydrological modelling, the hydrological modelling network can learn from, and with, critical social sciences. This is a call for responsible modelling – modelling that is accountable, transparent, power-sensitive, situated and reproducible and this responsibility is carried by all actors related to the modelling study. To support our proposition, we have four pillars of arguments, detailing the social aspects in hydrological modelling, insights from the critical social sciences, how to build bridges between sciences, and reflecting on what the hydrological modelling network can learn. We provide several actionable recommendations as a follow-up. The main take-away, from our perspective, is that responsible modelling is a shared responsibility. Therefore, we invite all actors – from the modelling network (from commissioner to modeller to end-user) and society – to take up their share in establishing responsible modelling.
Competing interests: At least one of the (co-)authors is a member of the editorial board of Hydrology and Earth System Sciences.
Publisher's note: Copernicus Publications remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims made in the text, published maps, institutional affiliations, or any other geographical representation in this preprint. The responsibility to include appropriate place names lies with the authors.- Preprint
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RC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-673', Anonymous Referee #1, 25 Mar 2025
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Review - Remmers et al.
HESS Opinions: Reflecting and acting on the social aspects of modelling
General Comments:
Remmers et al. provide an opinion piece on how hydrological modeling could benefit from insights and practices of the critical social sciences. They offer a well-structured and argued discussion on reasons for and possibilities to increase the accountability, transparency and responsibility in hydrological modelling.
I particularly enjoyed the last part of the paper which has a lot of important and well communicated conclusions and action items for the different actors in a hydrological modelling network. I do believe that the introduction and motivational part of the paper can be strengthened by making new terms and ways of thinking more approachable to the reader inexperienced with critical social sciences. I therefore have a few suggestions that I hope can help in this regard.
Generally, I believe this is a very fitting contribution for HESS and a nice piece for the hydrological modelling community to reflect on current and future modelling practices and the impact social aspects might have on our work. Awareness is the first step to change, which is why I recommend publication after minor revisions.
Specific Comments:
[Are models perceived as neutral and objective tools?]
The authors base their motivation on the framing that models are perceived as neutral and objective tools. I would argue that most hydrologic literature (and also the sources cited in line 16) argue that models are hypothesis and therefore not quite as neutral as implied. These (model) hypotheses are generally formed based on a perceptual model which is then translated into the mathematical model that becomes the “tool” we use. As perceptual models are known to be personal and at least in part qualitative, I think we can agree, that by the time the model is formed and ready to be used as a “tool” a lot of social influence has already happened. The authors themselves describe part of this process in their Argument 2. Therefore, I keep on stumbling over the sentence “models are perceived as neutral and objective tools” as something I can’t fully agree with. And I would imagine that this will be the case for most experienced modelers. To engage both groups (the problem aware and less aware modelers and model users) equally well, it might be helpful to simply acknowledge that different groups in the hydrological modelling network are more or less likely to see a hydrological model as a “neutral and objective tool”, but that it is important for everyone to understand what this notion may lead to.
I believe that most of my discomfort comes from the sentence “Within hydrological modelling, a persistent notion exists that a model is a neutral, objective tool” that is used prominently in abstract and introduction. To me it has the disadvantage of veiling and softening the main motivation for this paper (the assumption of a neutral and objective tool is questionable and comes with consequences) and giving an impression of consensus where a spectrum of understanding already exists.
I assume that this comes down to mere nuances of formulation as I realize that “notion” is supposed to imply that “many believe models are objective, but this view is not universally accepted”. I argue, however, that a more direct phrasing of this issue will help the reader to grasp the main point and motivation of this paper more easily and helps to acknowledge that we do not start at zero regarding the awareness of this problem.
I therefore suggest to either change the first sentence of the introduction to be a more direct description of the problem or include a short discussion of the different states of awareness regarding this problem around line 24. I believe this would also make the citations from line 16 more fitting (see minor comments).
[What is critical social science and how can we benefit from it?]
As a reader I am very interested in what critical social science is and how we can benefit from it. But from the introduction alone I feel I do not yet see what critical social science has to offer that hydrology can learn from. I feel that might mainly be the case because the introduction could often benefit from some specific examples that guide and convince the reader of the storyline instead of making statements that are justified with citations from a field less familiar to the average hydrology reader. I would prefer to be convinced through examples from the literature rather than expected to read all the cited papers myself to reach a similar conclusion. I would appreciate if the authors could include more specific examples from the papers they cite when building their argument in the introduction. More details and general contemplations are then provided in the following chapters. I will provide specifics in the minor comments.
Minor/Technical Comments:
- Abstract – “marginalizing certain stakeholders”: is this the most relatable problem to mention at this point? I initially fail to imagine an example of what this might mean and would like to read an “OR” with a more relatable example (maybe overconfidence in model results etc.) or a more specific example of the marginalized stakeholder consequence.
- Abstract – “The main take-away, from our perspective, is that responsible modelling is a shared responsibility” – This sentence might diminish the contribution of the article a little. I would suggest rephrasing in a way that lists the different contributions of the article. E.g.: We highlight that responsible modelling is a shared task between all actors of a modelling network and provide several actionable recommendations for individual actors to increase their share in facilitating responsible modelling. Or something similar.
- L25-26 – I believe these citations see models not as a neutral tool but as a hypothesis that needs testing. I therefore find the referencing questionable with the current phrasing. Especially, since the same citations are used in line 27 when stating that “models are simplifications where we need to make choices on what to represent or not to represent”. Please refine citation usage for these two sections of the paper.
- L21-23 – I think this part would benefit from at least one very specific example. I can offer a potential example of first nations in Canada suffering from not being included as stakeholder during dam construction. Maybe the introduction of this paper can be a good starting point to investigate specific examples: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08941920.2018.1451582
- L28-29 – “This can result in injustices: some groups being overlooked […]”: I find it very difficult to jump between processes that become invisible vs. groups being overlooked etc. These are very different aspects of modelling consequences, and I believe it would be helpful to elaborate a bit on potential path dependencies or describe these different aspects in a bit more context than currently done.
- L35 – the comma should be a dash to fit the beginning of the sentence?
- L38 – STS as an abbreviation that is not used again in this paper, so it can be removed
- L38 – “provide insights into how to analyze and deal with non-neutrality”: Would it be helpful to include an example of what is being done in this science so the hydrological reader gets and idea what might be worth implementing? This might provide further support to the next sentence calling for more responsible modelling.
- L80 ff – “Proske et al.“ and equifinality in cloud microphysics. I would argue we have good examples of equifinal model performance in hydrology. I would suggest using a hydrology example here?
- L104 – something seems to be wrong with the citation (?), please check
- L106 – consider removing the “obviously”
- L124 – do the critical social sciences or a specific publication provide some sort of glossary or terminology framework that could be referred to here? If a hydrologist would want to learn about this vocabulary, where could he start?
- L144 – is there any example or guide on how to start if an author would want to write and add a reflexivity statement to their work?
- L157-158 – “can have ethical implications in society AND water management”?
- L160 – Is there one outcome for the development of ethics of artificial intelligence that could be named as being useful/adaptable to hydrology?
- L165 – and again it would be great to read an example to make these new abstract ideas easier to grasp
- Title for 4 – just a personal preference, but I would probably write “building bridges between (two) scientific disciplines” – but up to the authors
- I really like part 4! Do you have suggestions on how teachers should be educated/ can educate themselves on this if they would like to incorporate it in their classes? I asked this before, but can you maybe reference sources that would help the motivated reader to get started on writing a positionality statement?
- L208 – The sentence about flexible modelling frameworks seems a bit detached. Or at least the context of why it comes up here does not seem to be explained in a convincing way. Maybe the authors can consider rephrasing the sentence and making the connection between diversity of approaches, flexible modelling frameworks and different context a bit clearer.
- L235 – should there be a period/full stop at the end of the sentence?
- Section 6 – is there a possibility of providing an example for each point mentioned to make it easier for the reader to find a starting point? E.g. what type of assumptions could a model user ask for that might be relevant. How does he know what to ask for? Is there an example of a positionality statement a modeler could look at? Are there resources for reflexivity practices? Are there resources available each actor could look at to get started? To avoid people taking this as recipe you already have the follow up statement that anyone needs to adapt all this to his own working environment.
- Conclusion – it might be helpful to have the definition of what you consider a hydrological modelling network to be a bit earlier then in the conclusions.
- References – ter Horst et al. “Making a case for power-sensitive water modelling: a literature review” is still cited as a discussion paper. But the final version of the paper is already available: https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/28/4157/2024/
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-673-RC1 -
RC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2025-673', Derek Karssenberg, 27 Mar 2025
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This is an interesting opinion paper providing an overview of the current research on social aspects of modelling, and proposing actionable recommendations for the modelling community. Please find my suggestions for further improvement below.
Figure 1
In my opinion the figure is not very useful in this form. For some arguments it is not obvious where they should be positioned (or it is obvious in which case the figure is arguably not very useful). I am also wondering why ‘Model Problem’ is on the left side (where ‘Society’ is) while the ‘Modeller’ is on the right side (where ‘Modelling Community’ is). It could also be the other way around. However, I do not have a suggestion for improvement so you could also keep it, possibly with minor adjustments. An alternative would be to organize the figure along the lines of the text, i.e. social aspects, insights from social sciences, building bridges between sciences, reflecting (note that this goes, more or less, from defining the problem (could be left in the figure) towards possible solutions (could be on the right side of the figure)).
Line 15
‘hydrological modelling’. Please define, what type of models? For instance, is the discussion here about model concepts/equations or (also) about the software implementation? Also, is the discussion about forward simulation models (any form) or also about models relying on statistical learning (including machine learning) that are mostly not run forward in time – note that in both models types, observational data are used and there are currently blends, often referred to as hybrid models. Also, do you refer to the activity of model building? Or also other steps in the model development cycle (e.g. calibration, application).
Line 15-18
It is argued here that models are neutral because they are influenced by society. This is indeed the case. However, in addition, models are influenced by the social network within the modelling community (see e.g. Babel et al, 2019). Thus, social factors within the modelling community as well as influences from outside (society) are important in making models non-neutral. In my opinion both aspects need to be highlighted here.
In addition, it would be good to define ‘neutral’. It seems you consider it as a synonym for ‘objective’ but these may be different concepts. It seems the references provided do not clearly define ‘neutral’.
Line 30-31
‘Simultaneously, ignoring the political side …’ I have a similar comment here as given above (line 15-18). This sentence (line 30-31) seems to imply you consider mainly influence from society (‘political side of models’) on the model (and model community). However also within the model community social factors influence modelling.
Section 2 Social aspects in hydrological modelling
You distinguish three ‘arguments’. The description of these need to be improved in my opinion. Please let me explain how I see it and how I recommend describing this. You are free following a different approach but please consider my line of reasoning below.
The first argument (in my opinion) should be about how society affects models and modelling. Society is a stakeholder and as a result, society influences the ‘shape’ of models. The current text however only explains _that_ models are embedded in society. In addition (and more importantly), it needs to describe that society influences models/modelling and how.
Similar to the first argument, the second argument needs to describe that social aspects within the modelling community influence models/modelling and how. It does. However, in my opinion it can be improved by also explaining the mechanisms. Equifinality is relevant here (multiple models are ‘possible’) but the mechanisms that lead to these particular different models are equally important and could be described. One of the mechanisms is ‘habits’, as described in Babel et al (2019). You use it as a reference for equifinality but if I am correct, we did not discuss it in our paper (Babel et al (2019)). The paper mainly explains _how_ social factors lead to particular models (what you would call ‘non-neutral’ models).
The third argument, in my opinion, should be about the fact that models have implications for society (political, ethical) and that it is thus extremely important (also outside academia) to describe and discuss how ‘neutral’ they are as they have impact outside academia. This third argument does not discuss how social factors influence models (like the first and second argument). Instead, it describes the relevance of modelling choices for society. I do not see how ‘the previous arguments come together’ (line 98) here (at least for me it is a confusing statement); if you are convinced this is the case please improve the explanation.
Line 160
Ethics from AI could indeed be used for ethics in numerical modelling (is this manuscript about numerical modelling only?). In my opinion this deserves somewhat more discussion. For instance, try to summarize the ethics field in AI and give suggestions how it could be converted to numerical modelling (or what we could learn from it).
Positional statement
Consider including a positional statement (or a short description of the background of the authors).
Minor comments
Line 20
Reference(s) seem to be missing (after Packett et al, 2020)
Line 22
‘might’. Consider ‘may’ or ‘will’
Line 64
‘purely technical’. Technical does not need to be neutral (not at all, see e.g. work by Latour). Reword and avoid ‘technical’ here.
Line 110
‘tools and theoretical frameworks’, rewrite ‘theoretical frameworks and tools’ (theory comes first, tools are derived from the theory).
Citation: https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-2025-673-RC2
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