ABSTRACT
Identifying and mapping the problem space is an essential first step to diagnosing what matters and why, and toward understanding what can and can’t be done given the capacity and constraints imposed by a given problem context. A collaboratively designed process provides an opportunity to engage stakeholders to diagnose, understand, and reconcile competing perspectives through a carefully designed negotiated problem-solving process. Our proposed problem identification process follows five steps: (1) recognize that water problems cross boundaries, domains, scales, and sectors; (2) determine who decides who gets how much water and how; (3) categorize the water problems as simple, complicated, and complex; (4) acknowledge differences among complexity, causes, and conditions; and (5) synthesize scientific and social facts. A carefully designed problem-mapping process is likely to elicit mutually agreeable and nearly self-enforcing intervention strategies to inform the solution of many water problems, whether simple or complex.
