Explore methods
Explore the innovative methods to interdisciplinary research and data integration used by the Relu research projects, illustrated with case studies.
Interdisciplinarity has been a strategic key priority for Relu. Relu teams all included natural and social scientists, engaged closely with stakeholders, and merged qualitative and quantitative disciplines.
Relu funded 94 research projects and brought together researchers from 40 distinct disciplines from across the social, environmental and biological sciences - from anthropology to water engineering. Projects engaged around 4,000 stakeholders.
This gives a unique opportunity to analyse and reflect on the variety of innovative interdisciplinary methods and approaches to data integration that emerged, with many projects applying a combination of many such approaches.
Many projects implemented a collaborative approach among researchers and stakeholders to create a mutual understanding of the issues studied.
Interdiciplinary working enabled closer engagement with stakeholders in the research and incorporation of their expertise.
Several projects took on the challenge of measuring and quantifying interdisciplinarity through structured methods.
Project applied interdisciplinarity at the data level by modelling social, economic, ecological, environmental and hydrological factors from input data.
Projects have used modelling methods to develop visual scenarios showing how different factors or influences can contribute to change.