Abstract

Decision makers bear the majority of the responsibility for managing the impacts of development, population growth, and climate change-all of which pose challenges to sustainable water resource management. Decisions aimed at moderating negative impacts from these pressures should be informed by, and make use of, effective innovations in water resource management science. However, in practice, the simple dissemination of scientificallyrobust information about the effectiveness of new strategies is unlikely to result in the desired adoption of these strategies by decision makers [1,2]. Studies suggest that cultural and social transmission processes are much more important to understanding the diffusion of innovations than is often assumed by most theorists [3,4] and thus more emphasis has to be placed on linking scientific research to decision-making [5]. Building on the research of many others who have sought to explore the importance of contextual and situational attributes to the translation of research to practice [5-8] this paper develops and tests an approach to assess a municipal entity’s relative likelihood of engaging effectively in consideration of implementation of academic and research-oriented innovations. This research is focused on water resource management innovations specific to stormwater management and Low Impact Development (LID) or Green Infrastructure (GI), however, it is anticipated that the general approach is relevant to other environmental management issues.