TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The contributions of social scientists to decision-making products are critical. Often, however, social scientists are not consulted until the final stages of the product development process. At the Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology, or CIROH, decision-support scientists like Dr. Melissa Kenney prove that social science is the key to developing effective and well-designed water products.
Kenney is the most recent recipient of the Thomas Graziano Research-to-Operations Award, a recognition given to those whose work measurably strengthens real-world hydrology applications by bridging the gap between research and operations. Her work identifies user pain points and develops methodological processes used by both researchers and students in programs like the Water Prediction Innovators Summer Institute. These processes make discovering user needs easier, helping CIROH to uncover risk communication gaps, user preferences and forecast design needs to inform products that serve communities across the United States.
“To be brought in from the beginning to improve the operational value of products like these is a really exciting partnership,” said Kenney. “We can learn from each other and also improve these products for the American public.”
Combining Disciplines to Support Decision-Making
Water has been a thread in Kenney’s work throughout her entire career. At Duke University, her dissertation focused on integrating water quality models and decision analytic models to improve U.S. nutrient criteria standards. From there, she moved into a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins University, an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship at the U.S. Global Change Research Program and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, and a position as research faculty at the University of Maryland.
Throughout her career, Kenney has consistently worked to improve the usability of water information by working at the intersection of water science, environmental science, social and behavioral sciences, risk communication and visualization. Now, she serves as the director of research and knowledge initiatives and research professor of environmental decision support science at the University of Minnesota’s Institute on the Environment. As the UM institutional lead to CIROH, her team has focused on their collaborations with federal agencies like NOAA’s Office of Water Prediction.
One of the significant ways that interdisciplinary social scientists like Kenney contribute to product development is through the creation and testing of research methods. One such method is DARTS, which stands for diagnosing, assessing, redesigning, testing and synthesizing.
Creating a Framework for Product Development
Kenney originally explored the DARTS method when she worked with NOAA on temperature and precipitation outlooks. She further refined the method when she partnered with hydrologists, water resource experts and data scientists on the U.S. Geological Survey’s WaterWatch, and with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center and National Integrated Drought Information System, or NIDIS, to work on their drought outlooks.
The first step in the DARTS framework is “Diagnose,” which the team improved methodologically through CIROH-funded research. Kenney’s team, alongside researchers at the University of Vermont led by Dr. Anne Jefferson, developed a new method to understand visual communication pain points.
“One of the things that we did was ask a set of different questions related to finding information in these products. We were interested to know whether the information was there, whether someone would be able to find it or if they would experience pain points,” Kenney said. “Then we got together and had a group discussion about things that worked really well, or things that were less effective or confusing about that particular product .”
DARTS is used to center the user experience and to test how well a water product’s visualization works to improve users’ understanding and decision-making. Kenney took the insights gained from the set of questions for users and applied it to several different water visualization products. Kenney’s team continues to use and refine the DARTS model, now focused on new data products for inland and coastal flooding and droughts, including probabilistic representations.
“We’ve brought our flood and drought work under CIROH because it fits a portfolio that looks at both too much water and too little water at the same time,” said Kenney. “We are looking, for example, at multiple models and parameterizations of flood inundation mapping that are being developed by CIROH researchers, which creates a probabilistic or likelihood FIM visual.”
Testing the Method with Student Support
Methods like DARTS can be applied across many different products and adapted to fit the needs of researchers across many different fields. The first several steps of the method have already been adopted for research by a group of students in the 2026 Summer Institute to think about a new set of private sector products.
“To achieve our objectives, the DARTS framework was crucial. Every stage of the DARTS framework builds evidence systematically, ensuring that our redesign decisions were grounded in objective science rather than subjective interpretation alone,” said Dominic Kyei, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kansas and Summer Institute fellow. “Our conversations with Melissa and other colleagues opened our eyes to something we had not fully appreciated before — that even shapes, colors and map legends can fundamentally determine how people initially interpret flood risk information .”
Kenney received suggestions for the DARTS method from the Summer Institute students based on the adaptations they made to help them answer new questions as they explored flood inundation mapping. Methodological processes like these are valuable because they are intended to work for a broad range of products while providing specific insights to better understand whether the product serves the purposes for which it is designed.
Enhancing Research to Operations
Kenney’s work as an interdisciplinary scientist is proven to advance the research-to-operations pipeline. By providing guidelines for how to assess a product in development, she improves not only the operation of the product, but the lives of every community that her work touches. Her broad base of connections from her work with federal entities, student programs and universities has given Kenney the connections who support her work and whom she can support in return.
She shows that social scientists smooth the streams of product development and therefore should be integrated early in the decision-making and product-development processes. Kenney’s work demonstrates that a framework that integrates social science with hydrologic science is one better prepared to support the whole water resources community .
About CIROH
The Cooperative Institute for Research to Operations in Hydrology (CIROH) is a NOAA Cooperative Institute hosted at The University of Alabama and supported by the National Weather Service. As a unique national consortium with 28 partner institutions, CIROH unites academic, government and private sector partners to co-produce research that enhances operational water prediction capabilities and informs critical decision-making for issues like floods, droughts and water quality. Through its interdisciplinary research, educational initiatives and outreach programs, CIROH advances NOAA’s water prediction services with new techniques such as artificial intelligence and remote sensing, equips the next generation of water-resource professionals with essential skills and fosters public and stakeholder engagement to support federal agency and private sector needs. CIROH transforms scientific innovations into practical solutions and operational tools that boosts the delivery of actionable water intelligence, increases effectiveness of water resources management, promotes community resilience and informs decision-makers across the United States.