Developing a digital platform for knowledge disclosure of land subsidence

Abstract

Land subsidence in areas with weak soils affects a large part of the Netherlands and causes many problems. To solve them diverse and specialized knowledge of possible measures to prevent, mitigate or reverse land subsidence is needed. This knowledge is fragmented over many agencies, companies and individuals. Here we show how data and knowledge are related and we stress the importance of implicit knowledge for knowledge transfer on land subsidence. It is demonstrated that land subsidence in the Netherlands is a “wicked problem”. This makes its solution cumbersome. However, we show that self-learning digital environments can help considerably in knowledge acquisition, storage and retrieval. We give an inventory of research questions that have still to be answered to make an digital environment really effective for a wicked problem like land subsidence.