A C Petersen
Biographic Data
| ID | 47935 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A C Petersen |
| GIVEN NAMES | A C |
| FAMILY NAME | Petersen |
| SIGNATURE | PETERSEN A C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0706-5635 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 355 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Temporal characteristics of disaster data
Temporal trends in disaster data can lead to contradictory conclusions, with some studies suggesting increasing impacts while others report decreases or stabilization. This study explores how these misconceptions can arise in disaster trend analyses and presents key factors to consider in preventing misinterpretations or misuse that could impact policy, insurance, and public perceptions towards scientific rigor. Factors that influence trend claim…
Three institutional pathways to envision the future of the IPCC
Multilevel governance of antimicrobial resistance risks
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is increasing and spreading throughout the world. Many academic publications address the human health care, veterinary, food safety and environmental aspects of this cross-border challenge. This paper focuses on the broader issue of the governance of AMR at multiple levels, from local to global. The paper provides a literature overview on the full complexity of the governance of the risk. A structured search strateg…
Impending doom or unnecessary panic? The struggle for discursive hegemony in South Africa’s acid mine drainage policy problem
This article contributes to the literature on environmental policy controversies. We utilize an Argumentative Discourse Analysis (ADA)-based approachto analyze the struggle for discursive hegemony that took place between competing story-lines in the context of the acid mine drainage (AMD) environmental policy problem, located in the gold mining areas of greater Johannesburg, South Africa. With this article we make a theoretical contribution by pr…
The shaping of anticipation
Motivated by foreseeable changes in the Earth's systems, governments across the world learn to anticipate the consequences. Understanding how such anticipation comes about should ease its further development. We therefore explore the central capacity within anticipatory governance: the capacity to infer future consequences. Such inferential capacity consists of tools, techniques, and practices increasing an agent's options to infer consequences. …
The Roles of Experts and Expert‐Based Information in the Advocacy Coalition Framework
The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) remains one of the leading conceptual models in the policy sciences because it continues to be revised and updated as required. A focus area of the ACF that requires further theorization is the roles of experts and expert‐based information in influencing policy problem contexts. Our article takes a necessary step in this direction by (1) evaluating the usefulness of Weible’s expectations regarding the uses o…
How networked organisations build capacity for anticipatory governance in South East Asian deltas
Sameness and difference in delta planning
Triggered by an increased awareness of the possible effects of climate change, many deltaic regions around the world are undertaking planning initiatives to address the problems they expect to face in the future. Dutch delta planning knowledge and expertise figure prominently in some of these initiatives. We use this article to ask why this is so. What makes Dutch delta knowledge special, and how does it become generic enough to travel to other p…
Assessing qualitative and quantitative dimensions of uncertainty in energy modelling for policy support in the United Kingdom
Difficult travels
Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand have large river deltas. The first three deltas have international commitments for so-called delta plans: large-scale national efforts to reshape deltas in light of future economic growth and climate change. Thailand’s Chao Phraya delta has no such commitments. Why is this the case? This article proposes that Thailand’s absence of a colonial past has retained a differently ordered institutional capacity a…
Diplomacy in Action
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reviews scientific literature on climate change in an attempt to make scientific knowledge about climate change accessible to a wide audience that includes policymakers. Documents produced by the IPCC are subject to negotiations in plenary sessions, which can be frustrating for the scientists and government delegations involved, who all have stakes in getting their respective interests met. Thi…
Differences in views of experts about their role in particulate matter policy advice
There is ample scientific evidence of adverse health effects of air pollution at exposure levels that are common among the general population. Some points of uncertainty remain, however. Several theories exist regarding the various roles that experts may play when they offer policy advice on uncertain issues such as particulate matter (PM). Roles may vary according to e.g. the views of the expert on the science-policy interface or the extent to w…
The reflective futures practitioner
This paper explores how foresight researchers involved in environmental, nature and planning issues attempt to balance salience, credibility and legitimacy while generating knowledge in interaction with policy-makers and other social actors. Engaging stakeholders in foresight processes can increase the robustness of foresight knowledge, broaden the spectrum of issues addressed, and create ‘ownership’ of the process. While in foresight practices s…
Exploring the transition potential of renewable energy communities
Renewable energy communities are grassroots initiatives that invest in ‘clean energy’ in order to meet consumption needs and environmental goals and thereby – often unwittingly – conduce to the spread of renewables. Our aim in the present study is to explore the potential of renewable energy communities in the Netherlands, as social niches, to contribute to transitions in the energy system. To do so, we propose three proxies for measuring the tra…
Roles of scientists as policy advisers on complex issues
Policymakers frequently encounter complex issues, and the role of scientists as policy advisers on these issues is not always clearly defined. We present an overview of the interdisciplinary literature on the roles of scientific experts when advising policymakers on complex issues, and in particular on the factors that influence these roles. A structured literature search was combined with literature found in reference lists of peer reviewed pape…
Opening up knowledge systems for better responses to global environmental change
Linking knowledge with action for effective societal responses to persistent problems of unsustainability requires transformed, more open knowledge systems. Drawing on a broad range of academic and practitioner experience, we outline a vision for the coordination and organization of knowledge systems that are better suited to the complex challenges of sustainability than the ones currently in place. This transformation includes inter alia: societ…
Établir la qualité des preuves pour les situations de décision complexes et controversies
Les décisions politiques sur les risques environnementaux complexes font fréquemment intervenir des éléments scientifiques contestés. Il n’y a généralement pas de « faits » qui conduisent à une politique correcte unique. Les éléments de preuve qui sont intégrés dans les avis scientifiques destinés à une décision politique nécessitent une évaluation de leur qualité. En 2003, l’Agence néerlandaise d’évaluation environnementale a adopté une méthode …
Exploring the impact of the IPCC Assessment Reports on science
Even though critique to IPCC is certainly not new, the climate controversies of 2009 and 2010 brought this critique again to the fore in public media. The paper contributes to this ongoing debate, and investigates empirically the impact of the four Assessment Reports of the IPCC on scientific publications and science, through scientometric analyses of cited references to IPCC reports. The results indicate, among other things, that the aggregate i…
Post-Normal Science in Practice at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency
About a decade ago, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) unwittingly embarked on a transition from a technocratic model of science advising to the paradigm of ''post-normal science'' (PNS). In response to a scandal around uncertainty management in 1999, a Guidance for ''Uncertainty Assessment and Communication'' was developed with advice from the initiators of the PNS concept and was introduced in 2003. This was followed in 2007 …
Stakeholder participation in environmental knowledge production
Participatory approaches in environmental knowledge production are commonly propagated for their potential to enhance legitimacy and quality of decision-making processes, especially under conditions of uncertainty. This paper describes the development of the Stakeholder Participation Guidance for the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency as an attempt to put the rather theoretical ambitions of the participation literature into practice. The…
Ethics and public perception of climate change
Climate change raises many questions with strong moral and ethical dimensions that are important to address in climate-policy formation and international negotiations. Particularly in the United States, the public discussion of these dimensions is strongly influenced by religious groups and leaders. Over the past few years, many religious groups have taken positions on climate change, highlighting its ethical dimensions. This paper aims to explor…
Conceptualizing sustainable development
Sustainability science poses severe challenges to classical disciplinary science. To bring the perspectives of diverse disciplines together in a meaningful way, we describe a novel methodology for sustainability assessment of a particular social-ecological system, or country. Starting point is that a sustainability assessment should investigate the ability to continue and develop a desirable way of living vis-à-vis later generations and life else…
Exploring the quality of evidence for complex and contested policy decisions
Policy decisions on complex environmental risks often involve contested science. Typically there are no 'facts' that entail a unique correct policy. The evidence that is embodied in scientific policy advice requires quality assessment. Advice should be relevant to the policy issue, scientifically tenable and robust under societal scrutiny. In 2003, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency adopted a standardized method, referred to as 'guid…
Uncertainty communication in environmental assessments
Scientific assessments of environmental problems, and policy responses to those problems, involve uncertainties of many sorts. Meanwhile, potential impacts of wrong decisions can be far-reaching. This article explores views on uncertainty and uncertainty communication in the Dutch science-policy interface and studies several issues concerning presentation of uncertainty information. Respondents considered uncertainty communication to be important…
Uncertainty management in the IPCC
Opening up knowledge systems for better responses to global environmental change
Linking knowledge with action for effective societal responses to persistent problems of unsustainability requires transformed, more open knowledge systems. Drawing on a broad range of academic and practitioner experience, we outline a vision for the coordination and organization of knowledge systems that are better suited to the complex challenges of sustainability than the ones currently in place. This transformation includes inter alia: societ…
Exploring the transition potential of renewable energy communities
Renewable energy communities are grassroots initiatives that invest in ‘clean energy’ in order to meet consumption needs and environmental goals and thereby – often unwittingly – conduce to the spread of renewables. Our aim in the present study is to explore the potential of renewable energy communities in the Netherlands, as social niches, to contribute to transitions in the energy system. To do so, we propose three proxies for measuring the tra…
Conceptualizing sustainable development
Sustainability science poses severe challenges to classical disciplinary science. To bring the perspectives of diverse disciplines together in a meaningful way, we describe a novel methodology for sustainability assessment of a particular social-ecological system, or country. Starting point is that a sustainability assessment should investigate the ability to continue and develop a desirable way of living vis-à-vis later generations and life else…
Ethics and public perception of climate change
Climate change raises many questions with strong moral and ethical dimensions that are important to address in climate-policy formation and international negotiations. Particularly in the United States, the public discussion of these dimensions is strongly influenced by religious groups and leaders. Over the past few years, many religious groups have taken positions on climate change, highlighting its ethical dimensions. This paper aims to explor…
The reflective futures practitioner
This paper explores how foresight researchers involved in environmental, nature and planning issues attempt to balance salience, credibility and legitimacy while generating knowledge in interaction with policy-makers and other social actors. Engaging stakeholders in foresight processes can increase the robustness of foresight knowledge, broaden the spectrum of issues addressed, and create ‘ownership’ of the process. While in foresight practices s…
Stakeholder participation in environmental knowledge production
Participatory approaches in environmental knowledge production are commonly propagated for their potential to enhance legitimacy and quality of decision-making processes, especially under conditions of uncertainty. This paper describes the development of the Stakeholder Participation Guidance for the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency as an attempt to put the rather theoretical ambitions of the participation literature into practice. The…
Exploring the impact of the IPCC Assessment Reports on science
Even though critique to IPCC is certainly not new, the climate controversies of 2009 and 2010 brought this critique again to the fore in public media. The paper contributes to this ongoing debate, and investigates empirically the impact of the four Assessment Reports of the IPCC on scientific publications and science, through scientometric analyses of cited references to IPCC reports. The results indicate, among other things, that the aggregate i…
Uncertainty communication in environmental assessments
Scientific assessments of environmental problems, and policy responses to those problems, involve uncertainties of many sorts. Meanwhile, potential impacts of wrong decisions can be far-reaching. This article explores views on uncertainty and uncertainty communication in the Dutch science-policy interface and studies several issues concerning presentation of uncertainty information. Respondents considered uncertainty communication to be important…
The Roles of Experts and Expert‐Based Information in the Advocacy Coalition Framework
The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) remains one of the leading conceptual models in the policy sciences because it continues to be revised and updated as required. A focus area of the ACF that requires further theorization is the roles of experts and expert‐based information in influencing policy problem contexts. Our article takes a necessary step in this direction by (1) evaluating the usefulness of Weible’s expectations regarding the uses o…
Differences in views of experts about their role in particulate matter policy advice
There is ample scientific evidence of adverse health effects of air pollution at exposure levels that are common among the general population. Some points of uncertainty remain, however. Several theories exist regarding the various roles that experts may play when they offer policy advice on uncertain issues such as particulate matter (PM). Roles may vary according to e.g. the views of the expert on the science-policy interface or the extent to w…
Post-Normal Science in Practice at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency
About a decade ago, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) unwittingly embarked on a transition from a technocratic model of science advising to the paradigm of ''post-normal science'' (PNS). In response to a scandal around uncertainty management in 1999, a Guidance for ''Uncertainty Assessment and Communication'' was developed with advice from the initiators of the PNS concept and was introduced in 2003. This was followed in 2007 …
Assessing qualitative and quantitative dimensions of uncertainty in energy modelling for policy support in the United Kingdom
How networked organisations build capacity for anticipatory governance in South East Asian deltas
Uncertainty management in the IPCC
Sameness and difference in delta planning
Triggered by an increased awareness of the possible effects of climate change, many deltaic regions around the world are undertaking planning initiatives to address the problems they expect to face in the future. Dutch delta planning knowledge and expertise figure prominently in some of these initiatives. We use this article to ask why this is so. What makes Dutch delta knowledge special, and how does it become generic enough to travel to other p…
Difficult travels
Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand have large river deltas. The first three deltas have international commitments for so-called delta plans: large-scale national efforts to reshape deltas in light of future economic growth and climate change. Thailand’s Chao Phraya delta has no such commitments. Why is this the case? This article proposes that Thailand’s absence of a colonial past has retained a differently ordered institutional capacity a…
Impending doom or unnecessary panic? The struggle for discursive hegemony in South Africa’s acid mine drainage policy problem
This article contributes to the literature on environmental policy controversies. We utilize an Argumentative Discourse Analysis (ADA)-based approachto analyze the struggle for discursive hegemony that took place between competing story-lines in the context of the acid mine drainage (AMD) environmental policy problem, located in the gold mining areas of greater Johannesburg, South Africa. With this article we make a theoretical contribution by pr…
The shaping of anticipation
Motivated by foreseeable changes in the Earth's systems, governments across the world learn to anticipate the consequences. Understanding how such anticipation comes about should ease its further development. We therefore explore the central capacity within anticipatory governance: the capacity to infer future consequences. Such inferential capacity consists of tools, techniques, and practices increasing an agent's options to infer consequences. …
Models as Technological Artefacts
Are humans currently changing the climate? Ask a policymaker and s/he will probably reply that climate scientists, in the context of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have indeed drawn a positive conclusion. How do scientists reach such conclusions, and why do policymakers trust them? From the perspective of science and technology studies (S&TS) an adequate answer to these questions requires sociological and philosophical rese…
Models as Technological Artefacts
Are humans currently changing the climate? Ask a policymaker and s/he will probably reply that climate scientists, in the context of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have indeed drawn a positive conclusion. How do scientists reach such conclusions, and why do policymakers trust them? From the perspective of science and technology studies (S&TS) an adequate answer to these questions requires sociological and philosophical rese…
Uncertainty management in the IPCC
Exploring the quality of evidence for complex and contested policy decisions
Policy decisions on complex environmental risks often involve contested science. Typically there are no 'facts' that entail a unique correct policy. The evidence that is embodied in scientific policy advice requires quality assessment. Advice should be relevant to the policy issue, scientifically tenable and robust under societal scrutiny. In 2003, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency adopted a standardized method, referred to as 'guid…
Uncertainty communication in environmental assessments
Scientific assessments of environmental problems, and policy responses to those problems, involve uncertainties of many sorts. Meanwhile, potential impacts of wrong decisions can be far-reaching. This article explores views on uncertainty and uncertainty communication in the Dutch science-policy interface and studies several issues concerning presentation of uncertainty information. Respondents considered uncertainty communication to be important…
Ethics and public perception of climate change
Climate change raises many questions with strong moral and ethical dimensions that are important to address in climate-policy formation and international negotiations. Particularly in the United States, the public discussion of these dimensions is strongly influenced by religious groups and leaders. Over the past few years, many religious groups have taken positions on climate change, highlighting its ethical dimensions. This paper aims to explor…
Conceptualizing sustainable development
Sustainability science poses severe challenges to classical disciplinary science. To bring the perspectives of diverse disciplines together in a meaningful way, we describe a novel methodology for sustainability assessment of a particular social-ecological system, or country. Starting point is that a sustainability assessment should investigate the ability to continue and develop a desirable way of living vis-à-vis later generations and life else…
Stakeholder participation in environmental knowledge production
Participatory approaches in environmental knowledge production are commonly propagated for their potential to enhance legitimacy and quality of decision-making processes, especially under conditions of uncertainty. This paper describes the development of the Stakeholder Participation Guidance for the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency as an attempt to put the rather theoretical ambitions of the participation literature into practice. The…
Exploring the impact of the IPCC Assessment Reports on science
Even though critique to IPCC is certainly not new, the climate controversies of 2009 and 2010 brought this critique again to the fore in public media. The paper contributes to this ongoing debate, and investigates empirically the impact of the four Assessment Reports of the IPCC on scientific publications and science, through scientometric analyses of cited references to IPCC reports. The results indicate, among other things, that the aggregate i…
Post-Normal Science in Practice at the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency
About a decade ago, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (PBL) unwittingly embarked on a transition from a technocratic model of science advising to the paradigm of ''post-normal science'' (PNS). In response to a scandal around uncertainty management in 1999, a Guidance for ''Uncertainty Assessment and Communication'' was developed with advice from the initiators of the PNS concept and was introduced in 2003. This was followed in 2007 …
Établir la qualité des preuves pour les situations de décision complexes et controversies
Les décisions politiques sur les risques environnementaux complexes font fréquemment intervenir des éléments scientifiques contestés. Il n’y a généralement pas de « faits » qui conduisent à une politique correcte unique. Les éléments de preuve qui sont intégrés dans les avis scientifiques destinés à une décision politique nécessitent une évaluation de leur qualité. En 2003, l’Agence néerlandaise d’évaluation environnementale a adopté une méthode …
Opening up knowledge systems for better responses to global environmental change
Linking knowledge with action for effective societal responses to persistent problems of unsustainability requires transformed, more open knowledge systems. Drawing on a broad range of academic and practitioner experience, we outline a vision for the coordination and organization of knowledge systems that are better suited to the complex challenges of sustainability than the ones currently in place. This transformation includes inter alia: societ…
Roles of scientists as policy advisers on complex issues
Policymakers frequently encounter complex issues, and the role of scientists as policy advisers on these issues is not always clearly defined. We present an overview of the interdisciplinary literature on the roles of scientific experts when advising policymakers on complex issues, and in particular on the factors that influence these roles. A structured literature search was combined with literature found in reference lists of peer reviewed pape…
The reflective futures practitioner
This paper explores how foresight researchers involved in environmental, nature and planning issues attempt to balance salience, credibility and legitimacy while generating knowledge in interaction with policy-makers and other social actors. Engaging stakeholders in foresight processes can increase the robustness of foresight knowledge, broaden the spectrum of issues addressed, and create ‘ownership’ of the process. While in foresight practices s…
Exploring the transition potential of renewable energy communities
Renewable energy communities are grassroots initiatives that invest in ‘clean energy’ in order to meet consumption needs and environmental goals and thereby – often unwittingly – conduce to the spread of renewables. Our aim in the present study is to explore the potential of renewable energy communities in the Netherlands, as social niches, to contribute to transitions in the energy system. To do so, we propose three proxies for measuring the tra…
Differences in views of experts about their role in particulate matter policy advice
There is ample scientific evidence of adverse health effects of air pollution at exposure levels that are common among the general population. Some points of uncertainty remain, however. Several theories exist regarding the various roles that experts may play when they offer policy advice on uncertain issues such as particulate matter (PM). Roles may vary according to e.g. the views of the expert on the science-policy interface or the extent to w…
Diplomacy in Action
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reviews scientific literature on climate change in an attempt to make scientific knowledge about climate change accessible to a wide audience that includes policymakers. Documents produced by the IPCC are subject to negotiations in plenary sessions, which can be frustrating for the scientists and government delegations involved, who all have stakes in getting their respective interests met. Thi…
Assessing qualitative and quantitative dimensions of uncertainty in energy modelling for policy support in the United Kingdom
Difficult travels
Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam and Thailand have large river deltas. The first three deltas have international commitments for so-called delta plans: large-scale national efforts to reshape deltas in light of future economic growth and climate change. Thailand’s Chao Phraya delta has no such commitments. Why is this the case? This article proposes that Thailand’s absence of a colonial past has retained a differently ordered institutional capacity a…
Sameness and difference in delta planning
Triggered by an increased awareness of the possible effects of climate change, many deltaic regions around the world are undertaking planning initiatives to address the problems they expect to face in the future. Dutch delta planning knowledge and expertise figure prominently in some of these initiatives. We use this article to ask why this is so. What makes Dutch delta knowledge special, and how does it become generic enough to travel to other p…
How networked organisations build capacity for anticipatory governance in South East Asian deltas
The shaping of anticipation
Motivated by foreseeable changes in the Earth's systems, governments across the world learn to anticipate the consequences. Understanding how such anticipation comes about should ease its further development. We therefore explore the central capacity within anticipatory governance: the capacity to infer future consequences. Such inferential capacity consists of tools, techniques, and practices increasing an agent's options to infer consequences. …
The Roles of Experts and Expert‐Based Information in the Advocacy Coalition Framework
The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) remains one of the leading conceptual models in the policy sciences because it continues to be revised and updated as required. A focus area of the ACF that requires further theorization is the roles of experts and expert‐based information in influencing policy problem contexts. Our article takes a necessary step in this direction by (1) evaluating the usefulness of Weible’s expectations regarding the uses o…
Multilevel governance of antimicrobial resistance risks
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is increasing and spreading throughout the world. Many academic publications address the human health care, veterinary, food safety and environmental aspects of this cross-border challenge. This paper focuses on the broader issue of the governance of AMR at multiple levels, from local to global. The paper provides a literature overview on the full complexity of the governance of the risk. A structured search strateg…
Impending doom or unnecessary panic? The struggle for discursive hegemony in South Africa’s acid mine drainage policy problem
This article contributes to the literature on environmental policy controversies. We utilize an Argumentative Discourse Analysis (ADA)-based approachto analyze the struggle for discursive hegemony that took place between competing story-lines in the context of the acid mine drainage (AMD) environmental policy problem, located in the gold mining areas of greater Johannesburg, South Africa. With this article we make a theoretical contribution by pr…
Three institutional pathways to envision the future of the IPCC
Political science (21 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Sustainability and Climate Change Governance (13 works) · Economics (11 works) · Environmental resource management (9 works) · Business (8 works) · Engineering (8 works) · Management science (7 works) · Politics (7 works)