FRACTAL sought to deepen the engagement between scientific and city-regional decision makers. The project adopted an embedded researcher (ER) approach. ERs were recruited to liaise between scientists and decision-makers, dividing their time between universities and city government. Before the project, other engagements had tended to have a narrow focus and short-term consulting capacity.
In order to make climate science relevant and useable an understanding of the application context is required. Conversely, to ensure the robustness of climate information an understanding of climate science is needed. Making these connections is difficult because scientists and decision makers operate in different networks with different priorities, coding schemes and temporalities for their work. ERs were able to span these boundaries, facilitating engagements and helping to generate and translate the evidence needed for real-world decision-making processes.
