Blog, Collaborative Learning

Discover this new study by Scheuer Sebastian, Jache Jessica, Sumfleth Luca, Wellmann Thilo and Haase Dagmar on how creating accessible evidence bases can create opportunities through the integration of interactive tools into literature review synthesis.

To make cities more livable, to support climate change adaptation through increasing resilience, and to address related socio-environmental challenges such as the improvement of human health and well-being, urban areas ought to become more sustainable, greener, and thereby, more environmentally just.

To meet these demands, evidence-based, effective actions within the urban space, e.g., greening, are key. But defining such actions relies on appropriate indicators that should meet the criteria of: (i) credibility and validity, i.e., the scientific adequacy of arguments and data with respect to the indicant; (ii) salience, i.e., the relevancy of corresponding assessments, including aspects of scalability and transferability; and (iii) legitimacy, i.e., the application of a rigorous scientific process to generate information and knowledge. Plus, the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that immediate access to relevant information is key for timely actions and forming of public opinion and discourse.

In this regard, dashboards present themselves as invaluable tools for the democratization of data and for the creation of accessible evidence bases. Building on this momentum, it is proposed to integrate interactive means such as dashboards into academic literature review synthesis, in order to support the summarization, narration, and dissemination of findings, and furthermore, to increase transparency and support the transferability and comparability of findings.

The implementation of such a proposed dashboard is described in this article for an exemplary case for the CLEARING HOUSE project on urban forests as nature-based solutions, with a focus on technical-methodological aspects and the dashboard realization.