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Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology

Integrate User Perspectives into Your R2O Pipeline to Improve Impact

Integrate User Perspectives into Your R2O Pipeline to Improve Impact

Day 1 Session 1 (10:30AM)

Presenters:

Schuyler DeBree (RTI)
Corinne Schuster-Wallace (University of Saskatchewan)

Capturing and integrating user feedback strengthens the research-to-operations (R2O) pipeline and helps ensure that research outputs are operationally impactful. This workshop introduces methods for identifying and integrating stakeholder perspectives into CIROH research across a range of effort levels, from AI-supported strategies to systematic qualitative social science methods.

Participants will be introduced to audience research approaches such as interviews, focus groups, thematic analysis, network mapping, and AI-assisted techniques. The workshop will showcase findings and methods from current and previous flood-focused CIROH social science projects to demonstrate effectiveness and spark discussion about how user insights can inform existing and future CIROH research and products.

Workshop Slides

Learning Outcomes:

  • Learn a range of audience research methods that can be implemented independently or through collaboration
  • Understand how methods such as interviews, focus groups, thematic analysis, network mapping, and AI-supported strategies are used in CIROH projects
  • Gain insight into user and community needs identified through previous and ongoing CIROH social science research
  • Explore how audience insights can improve the R2O pipeline and inform flood-related products and communication practices

Additional Notes:

This workshop includes a hands-on component demonstrating AI-supported audience research methods, including prompt engineering. Examples will show how AI can support activities such as literature reviews, transcription, thematic analysis, and synthesis of findings.

An interactive discussion will also explore audience insights from current and past CIROH projects, including flood communication network maps and thematic findings from the Flood Warning Information Sharing and Improving Flash Flood Forecasting projects. Participants will be encouraged to share their own research contexts and explore how audience insights could support their work.