Natural Asset Management Knowledge Mobilization: A Competency Framework and Professional Norms

Liese Coulter was awarded a Mitacs grant to explore skills required to manage natural assets and the prerequisites for natural assets management needed for the practice in Canada.

Many local governments recognize that it is equally important to understand, measure, manage and account for natural assets as it is for the engineered assets that provide services to their communities. With municipalities faced with both mitigating and adapting to climate change, the need for professional advice on managing natural infrastructure or natural assets is becoming more urgent. Evidence-based professional standards and capacity-building (including knowledge, academic programming, training and certifications) are prerequisites for natural assets management (NAM) to become a broadly-based practice in Canada. One channel to guide capacity building and to integrate NAM practice into traditional asset management is by framing NAM competencies to align with existing professional advice and norms.
Therefore, this research aims to mobilize knowledge to both inform the competencies required to manage natural assets and to better understand the complex interplay between functional standards in asset management policy, professional norms in practice, and capacity building in training. In keeping with guidance from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), knowledge mobilization for this project includes the production and use of research results through knowledge synthesis, dissemination, transfer, exchange, and co-production by researchers and knowledge users.
Methodologies will be primarily qualitative, collecting extant data for thematic document analysis and elicited data through interviews for inductive thematic analysis, which will provide the foundation for survey design and deductive analysis. Taking a participatory action research approach (PAR), engagement will be concerned with developing practical knowing that is grounded in a participatory worldview. Knowledge mobilization will be integrated in the project design to benefit both research outcomes and knowledge users in NAM practice and policy such as staff in local government and First Nations, natural resource and asset managers, and representatives in peak industry bodies in asset management.