On the basis of experiences from four stakeholder workshops held in Denmark, The Netherlands, Greece and Mexico, DBT has developed a step-by-step guide on how to perform participatory Technology Assessment to support decision making and implementation in relation to Subsurface Water Solutions.
A participatory Technology Assessment (pTA) is performed by local stakeholders and decision makers. It is a kind of cost-benefit analysis of the way a particular technology works and has effect in a particular societal and environmental context. The four pTAs all involved seven steps:
The four workshops have demonstrated a range of benefits from pTAs. They can:
Main issues of concern at the four sites
DBT played a crucial role in communicating with stakeholders at the replication sites. Particularly 5 subjects recurred as issues of concern by stakeholders at all replication sites: Environmental consideration, water quality, security against flooding, security of supply, economy. But the workshops also demonstrated that each site has its own site-specific challenges.
For example, Schinias in Greece is an important archaeological site, and important concerns there were that the salinity in the ground should remain unaltered, and that the drilling should not interfere with archaeological sites. In Denmark, on the other hand, clean groundwater is a very important value – hence, injecting surface water into the ground was controversial. And in Baja California in Mexico the main issue was to ensure that the export markets for edible crops would not be concerned about the use of reclaimed water for irrigation – hence, an important recommendation that came out of that workshop was that the use of reclaimed water should be coupled with continuous control and documentation of the water quality.
The step-by-step guide is a detailed introduction to all the steps involved in a pTA, describing the reasoning behind and giving examples from the four workshops. It can be downloaded for free from the SUBSOL website.