ID: 1616
Presenting Author: Chris Buse
Session: 668 - Spreading the Deliberative Approach to Impact Assessment and Decision-making
Status: pending
Open data platforms are an effective and deliberative mechanism for enhancing the transparency and credibility of IA.
The democratization of IA is leading to novel approaches for community and multi-stakeholder and rights-holder engagement for major projects. While this deliberative turn is helpful for broadening a definition of 'evidence' and has worked to incorporate diverse voices with lived experience who may be impacted by major projects, less attention has been given in the IA field to open data sources as a form of supporting inclusive evidence incorporation and transparency to support decision-making. Drawing from a peer-reviewed literature review of leading practices in data integration to support cumulative effects assessments, a grey literature review of practice-based cumulative effects assessment and data use, and in-depth interviews with cumulative effects practitioners and academics from across Canada, this presentation interrogates open data as a deliberative contribution to cumulative effects assessment and IA more broadly. It discusses the implications of open data and opportunities to enhance open science in IA by applying lessons learned through this research to the case example of Canada’s Open Science and Data Platform. Practice-based implications and novel opportunities for open data improvement in IA are discussed.
Dr. Chris Buse is an Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Health Sciences at Simon Fraser University. His research program focuses on the health impacts of resource development and climate change.
Coauthor 1: Raine Abad