A leading conservation group makes its positive impacts across a key watershed explicit.
Watersheds are viable nature-based solutions to water security — but without clarity on the positive impacts to water quality and quantity, the entire investment in them is at risk.
What was breaking
The case for watersheds rests on impacts nobody could yet state precisely.
For this project, the associated structured and unstructured data for a single watershed — gathered manually and from sensors and tracking devices — had to be made explicit, balancing data quality against data quantity for rigorous data science needs. Until that existed, the investment case rested on conviction rather than measurement.
Early insights amplified the people already doing the work.
What we did
A first-of-its-kind collaboration, orchestrated
Orchestrated a global technology innovator’s subject matter experts alongside the conservation group’s senior leadership — a first-of-its-kind collaboration between the two organizations.
Translation: technical SMEs, non-technical audience
Much of the work was translation. Technology SMEs were coached on messaging and examples so a non-technical audience could grasp the key aspects of an open water data platform built for scientific research, and every participant was held to why this engagement mattered to the conservation group’s broader theory of change.
What we brought
- Strategic direction for senior leaders and executive sponsors from both teams
- Alignment of the engagement to the conservation group’s broader theory of change
- Coaching and guidance for technology SMEs communicating to a non-technical audience
- A co-designed, co-led multi-day workshop opening the weeks-long Phase 1
What stayed with people
Analysis pointed to the key aspects of successful intervention in the watershed, which sharpened rather than displaced the judgment of the hydrologists, data scientists and the many stakeholders making the initiative work. Cross-team alignment, built in the opening workshop, is what let two very different organizations keep going.
What came of it
- Phase 1 deliveredwater quality and quantity data can be measured, registered and stored to a scientific standard.
- Many watershedsthe foundation is ready to optimize monitoring and reporting across the conservation group’s initiatives.
- Phase 2 definedanalytics, models for incomplete data sets and forecasts are the next stage of value.