To make real-world impact, integrating a systems perspective into decision-making necessitates transcending disciplinary boundaries and forging partnerships beyond the scientific community. ASA research engages with policymakers in interactive processes of co-production of theories of change, data, interventions and insights.
A prominent example is work on heavily disputed Loss&Damage climate policy under the UNFCCC, where ASA researchers have been engaging with policy and civil society over the years to contribute to consensual decision at COP28 to set up a Loss&Damage fund and to create the Santiago Network, a Technical Advisory Group (Mechler et al., 2023; Tavoni et al., 2024). Also, already over more than a decade ASA staff has been working with the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance, an innovative partnership between humanitarian and development NGOs, research, and private sector partners, to identify community-based solutions for building resilience to climate hazards in a wide range of rural and urban contexts around the world (Hochrainer-Stigler et al, 2023; Mechler et al., 2018).
The use of pre-developed processes and tools facilitates deliberations and enhances impact. For example, Multi-criteria Decision-analysis (MCDA) tool can help structure and rationalize decision-making in settings involving several stakeholders, each pursuing multiple objectives. This tool has been used in several case studies that informed policies mitigating the adverse COVID-19 impacts by highlighting trade-offs and identifying compromise solutions acceptable for major stakeholders' groups (Ekenberg et al., 2021, Ekenberg et al., 2022).
Citizen science projects is another avenue of transdisciplinary research pursued within ASA. Citizens get involved in research through large-scale campaigns helping researchers collect and process data, enabled by specially designed web-based tools. Such projects not only address data gaps but also engage communities in the monitoring and reporting process which can lead to behavioral change. These tools have been successfully applied most recently in Ghana where volunteer researchers collected data on marine litter along the coastline and contributed this knowledge to their country’s official statistics (Fraisl et al., 2024).