HESS Opinions: Operationalizing sociohydrology from systems thinking to systems doing for sustainable and resilient water management
- 1Tsinghua University (Beijing, China)
Abstract
Sociohydrology has advanced explanations of coupled human-water systems, but its translation into decision support remains uneven. We propose two complementary approaches to move from systems thinking to systems doing: (i) canonical feedback structures, which describe the main components of human-water systems and how they interact and enable comparison across cases while accounting for important local differences; and (ii) critical pathways, which trace how management actions propagate through these components to produce outcomes, including unintended consequences. Drawing on cases such as the levee effect and reservoir effect, these approaches connect system understanding with intervention design, monitoring, and adaptive learning. We then propose a minimal “systems-doing loop” that links the decision setting, feedback mapping, pathway tracing, indicator selection, and iteration, with equity and legitimacy treated as explicit constraints on useful knowledge and acceptable action. This framing complements predictive modelling and integrated water resources management by accounting for potential unintended consequences in decision-making and clarifying what to monitor and revisit as systems change.
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BibTeX
@article{tian2026hess,
title = {{HESS Opinions: Operationalizing sociohydrology from systems thinking to systems doing for sustainable and resilient water management}},
author = {Fuqiang Tian and Murugesu Sivapalan and Sondoss Elsawah and Melissa Haeffner and Anthony Jakeman and Heidi Kreibich and Leyang Liu and Haoyang Lyu and Ana Mijic and Jiale Wang and Jing Wei and Günter Blöschl},
journal = {Hydrology and Earth System Sciences},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.5194/hess-30-6731-2026},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-6731-2026},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - HESS Opinions: Operationalizing sociohydrology from systems thinking to systems doing for sustainable and resilient water management
AU - Fuqiang Tian
AU - Murugesu Sivapalan
AU - Sondoss Elsawah
AU - Melissa Haeffner
AU - Anthony Jakeman
AU - Heidi Kreibich
AU - Leyang Liu
AU - Haoyang Lyu
AU - Ana Mijic
AU - Jiale Wang
AU - Jing Wei
AU - Günter Blöschl
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/02
JO - Hydrology and Earth System Sciences
DO - 10.5194/hess-30-6731-2026
UR - https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-6731-2026
AB - Sociohydrology has advanced explanations of coupled human-water systems, but its translation into decision support remains uneven. We propose two complementary approaches to move from systems thinking to systems doing: (i) canonical feedback structures, which describe the main components of human-water systems and how they interact and enable comparison across cases while accounting for important local differences; and (ii) critical pathways, which trace how management actions propagate through these components to produce outcomes, including unintended consequences. Drawing on cases such as the levee effect and reservoir effect, these approaches connect system understanding with intervention design, monitoring, and adaptive learning. We then propose a minimal “systems-doing loop” that links the decision setting, feedback mapping, pathway tracing, indicator selection, and iteration, with equity and legitimacy treated as explicit constraints on useful knowledge and acceptable action. This framing complements predictive modelling and integrated water resources management by accounting for potential unintended consequences in decision-making and clarifying what to monitor and revisit as systems change.
SN - 1607-7938
ER -