This slide deck formed the basis of a converstaional presentation make to the ARK Group Forum titled "The Art of Knowledge Management, Learning and Communication held in Melbourne Australia on the 22 February 2018

1. Case Study: Bio-physical and water
policy modelling in Northern Victoria
An approach to knowledge
management, learning and
communication
Richard
Vines
Craig
Beverly
Presentation at the Forum titled:
22 February 2018

2. • Mapping an evolving knowledge space
• Designing for the pluralism of decision and innovation
contexts
• Mediating the boundaries between public, semi private,
restricted, personal and organisational knowledge spaces
• Strategic challenges facing knowledge management
What we said we will talk
about

3. Context and
assumptions
• What we will NOT be talking about
• What we WILL be talking about
• How we will try to make this relevant
to everyone

4. KM, learning and communication are
necessarily intertwined and form a vast
practice landscape
Evolving
context
Evolving
context
LearningLearning Communication
Knowledge as adaptive learning over time
For system thinkers, knowledge my be considered as
an emergent property of an evolutionary system

5. Knowledge management, learning and
communication occurs in a vast landscape
Context for action is king
The pluralism of decision contexts

6. Why biophysical and water policy modelling?
… discussion of integration of “science”, “modelling” and
“analytics” capabilities [in this case landscape analytics capabilities]
vis a vis the northern Victoria Water Policy Model as a case study.
Towards a new form of evidence informed policy making using
scenarios and the emergence of big
data and computational science
Interview Discussion with Craig

7. What is the Northern Victoria Water Policy
model?
The evolution of the modelling and the science since 2009

8. Landuse

9. Scenario
The following scenario assumes:
• 76% high reliability surface water allocation
• No groundwater usage
• No change in irrigated area extent beyond current district
boundaries
• Land use constrained to existing systems
• Current water trading rules apply
The underlying model allows for any number of “other scenarios”
Show-casing bio-physical and water policy modelling

10. Showcasing this work
Gross margin ($M) and traded water (ML) x WUE

11. Showcasing this work
Water use (ML) and traded water (ML) x WUE

12. • Horticulture and irrigated dairy systems are constrained
by existing area (as defined by the scenario)
• Increased water use efficiency provides opportunities for
mixed cropping systems
• This leads to increases in mixed cropping areas
... and increases gross margins for mixed cropping (via
reduced feed costs from irrigated pastures)
• When water is scarce, it is cheaper for dairy to sell their
water allocations and buy feed.
Key reflections on this
particular scenario

13. Biosciences Advanced
Scientific Computing landscape
The biggest next step: big data,
analytics and open innovation systems
Key reflections on this particular scenario
Research
... to the…
Including possibilities of simulating
“market signals” at different levels

14. Satellite-
image
processing
tool
User centric
decision support
at any level of
spatial focus
Catchment
analysis tool
(biophysical
modelling)
Northern
Victoria
Ground water
software
application
Northern
Victoria Water
policy software
application
What underpins this approach to to decision support?
The domain of landscape analytics
And 20 years of incremental knowledge creation and software development

15. Conversation
Where, why and how did this collaboration
with knowledge management start?

16. How do we communicate a subject matter
expert’s changing knowledge landscape over
two decades?
Mapping an evolving knowledge space

17. Contextual metadata
Entity to entity mappings
Many to many mappings
(EAC standard)
Bibliographic metadata
Entity to published resources mapping
(Mods standard)
Archival finding aids metadata
Entity to digital objects mapping
(EAD standard)
HTML and network
graph outputs
Communicating an evolving knowledge
space over time
Mapping an evolving knowledge space

18. Acknowledgement to the eScholarship Research Centre at the University of Melbourne
Knowledge space mapping is both a design and
communication process
Mapping an evolving knowledge space

19. People
centric
Collections
centric
Problem solving
context centric
Discussion
with Craig
as subject
matter
expert
Live showcasing and discussion of Agriculture
Resources Sciences Branch knowledge space:
Opportunities and constraints
Mapping an evolving knowledge space

20. On-line network graph of knowledge space

21. Mapping an evolving knowledge space
Our institutional context –
“Science enabling agriculture”
Science level of focusScience level of focus
Problem solving
context
“Science enabling agriculture”
involves strategic action planning,
program design and monitoring
headline indicators.
Showcasing of pilot impact register

22. Knowledge management, learning and
communication occurs in a vast landscape
What is
the Art?
Communities of interest context, distributed
learning and enabling platforms
Communities of interest level of focusCommunities of interest level of focus
Reflections on the eXtension Australia initiative
Distributed learning and decision support

23. Systems , platforms,
agreements and strategic
capabilities
Appropriate collections management
Govt Open IP
licenses (e.g. CC
4.0)
Partially protected IP
Licenses?
Fully protected IP
licenses /
agreements
Appropriate Intellectual Property management continuum
Institutional
repositories
and open
platforms
Closed collaboration
systems to support
commercialisation
Collaboration Platforms
Reciprocal learning
involves mediating the boundaries between public, semi private, restricted,
personal and organisational knowledge spaces
Reciprocal learning and approaches to organisational content licenses

24. Implications of “science enabling
agriculture”
Collections development, management and digital preservation level of focusCollections development, management and digital preservation level of focus
Persistent communication and retaining commitment to the notion that knowledge is always contextual

25. Strategic challenges facing
knowledge management –
reflections on the bio-physical
and water policy modelling in
Northern Victoria case study

26. Richard
Vines
Craig
Beverly
Discussion
(including discussion of handouts)
richard.vines@ecodev.vic.gov.au
Tel: 0467717431
craig.beverly@ecodev.vic.gov.au
Tel: 0488339726
An approach to knowledge
management, learning and
communication
Presentation at the Forum titled:
22 February 2018

27. Reflections on this case study
This case study brings to the surface many of the implicit challenges related to “small
data” and the rise of a future state called “big data” and (in this case) landscape analytics.
The implications are enormous for everyone – not withstanding the challenges that this
type of capability needs to be situated within the context of prevailing (and perhaps
evolving) views of a so called “market” (in this case the “water trading market”).
Implications
Impact claim
Innovative R&D, modelling and analytics can contribute to the
improving of strategies to maximise irrigated agriculture profitability
and boost regional economic activity under future water conditions.

28. Gutenberg printing press and the concept of a
table of content.
The medium of science communication is changing
Strategic challenges facing knowledge management

29. Contextual information is the new table of
contents – and source of scientific authority
Google search has no answer to this challenge
• Knowledge work is primarily textual but also multimodal
• Textual encoding initiative (TEI) is recognising the importance of
contextual information
• This involves recognition of the importance of:
- identify information, of people, places, books etc;
- descriptive information about things named in texts
such as start dates, geographical locations etc,
- navigation information such as headline indicators, key words
- explanatory information such as how measurements
have been normalised
• Without context – communication and learning is meaningless
Strategic challenges facing knowledge management

30. We are all involved in developing a new
type of literacy … from writing for the web to data scientist, to the
linguistics underpinning semantic and syntactical interoperability
Digital agriculture
Strategic challenges facing knowledge management

31. High level reflections on the bio-physical and
water policy modelling case study
• There is a desperate need to better understand the challenging aspects of the new types of
digital literacies we are all grappling with;
• Without such a “literacy compass”, including different types of informatics ,all knowledge
intensive work that is reliant upon digital infrastructure is likely to experience huge
challenges and sometimes, what might appear as unresolvable disputations;
• Knowledge management has the onerous task of endeavouring to mediate positions with its
focus on sense-making, negotiating, implementing and reflecting upon pragmatic solutions
to problems.
• The scale of the challenge is so large that perhaps there is a need to integrate knowledge
management with related disciplines, “organisational development “and “diversity” – whilst
retaining commitments to informatics??
• The rise of big data systems is replete with risk if some foundational and incremental
capabilities regarding the very nature of knowledge intensive work practices are not
adequately taken into account
Strategic challenges facing knowledge management
Handout 1

32. Some observations regarding strategic
challenges facing knowledge management
Examples
• Making visible the nature of “subject matter expertise” and communicating
the evolution of software applications and service systems over time;
• The real tension that exists between “corporate systems” and the real world
systems of subject matter experts;
• Collaborating across boundaries of difference – and the need for renewed
focus on team based learning;
• Identifying and “managing for” key enabling capabilities;
• The importance of “documentation” related to software development
pathways;
• Adopting standards, the discipline of digital repositories, digital preservation
and principles of research reproducibility;
• Managing for shades of open data (from fully closed systems to open systems
based on principles of reciprocal learning)
• The linking with communities of interest and distributed learning is something
not necessarily being addressed in current program management frameworks
Strategic challenges facing knowledge management
Handout 2

33. Relevant follow up literature
Shaping the context for an integrated knowledge hub for the dairy and grains industry project: managing
knowledge in the public sphere – ‘lessons learned’. University of Melbourne. 2011. https://minerva-
access.unimelb.edu.au/handle/11343/32680
Cultivating Capability: The socio-technical challenges of integrating approaches to records and knowledge
management. Journal of Records Management
2016-07-02 | journal-article. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/RMJ-11-2015-0035 URL:
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/RMJ-11-2015-0035
Collaborating across institutional and jurisdictional boundaries: enabling the emergence of a national
innovation system through public knowledge management. Knowledge Management Research & Practice May
2015, Volume 13, Issue 2, pp 187–197. 2013-08-19 | journal-article DOI: 10.1057/kmrp.2013.41
Integrating principles of social innovation and knowledge Management. National eXtension conference in 2014
in Sacramento California. 2014-03-28 | conference-paper.
URL: http://www.slideshare.net/plessons/usat-2014-0326-integrating-principles-of-social-innovation
.