Which catchment sciences, experiments, instrumentation, models, decision support tools and stakeholder involvement strategies are the hydrological sciences communities contributing to the needs of water management? What methodologies are helping to underpin the sciences that support policy such as the water framework directive and floods directive? Stakeholder and community involvement in water resource management is increasingly recognised as essential and stakeholder participation is a broad and rapidly growing research field. In this session, we will explore the diverse array of concepts, approaches and evaluation tools being used by researchers to gain an understanding of catchment science, management and participation. The strength of this session is in the sharing of the practical experience of problem solving at the community and/or the catchment scale. Topics covered include:

•Modelling with stakeholders: from perceptual to procedural models; incorporating stakeholder knowledge to parameterise, drive and test models; scenario development; interpretation of model results.
•Hydrological experiments and modelling to underpin catchment policy
•Decision-aiding processes and decision support tools leading to uptake of new water management solutions.
•Eliciting, weighting and integrating stakeholder knowledge, modelling uncertainty and addressing stakeholder concerns.
•Existing and emerging challenges and benefits from stakeholder involvement in hydrological research.
•Critical reflection, evaluating participation and measuring “success”.
•Social learning and emerging outcomes from collaborative research in hydrology.

The session consists of oral presentations and poster presentations where all authors have the opportunity to deliver a short summary presentation of their work, which will be followed by extensive discussion.