A socio-hydrological and temporal layer framework for interdisciplinary climate-adaptive landscape design: insights from a student workshop in Inbanuma, Japan

Understanding the dynamics of the deltaic system is a basic need to design flood resilient landscapes. This asks for lining out spatial and temporal developments by a system approach. This paper presents an introduction to a socio-hydrological analytical framework, which is tested and examined in an interdisciplinary student workshop conducted in the flood-prone Inbanuma landscape in Japan. This area has undergone long-term human–water interactions that fundamentally shaped spatial development.

The framework combines a socio-hydrological perspective with a temporal Dutch layer approach as its central organizing structure. Hydrological processes (surface water, groundwater, flood dynamics), technological interventions, and societal practices were analysed across multiple spatial and temporal scales to reveal their co-evolution. Through temporal mapping and layered analysis, students were asked to situate their own disciplinary expertise within a shared understanding of landscape transformation.

Next to the framework, the students in the interdisciplinary design workshop were asked to describe their design process across the five elements of Van Dooren (2013): Experimenting, Guiding Theme, Frame of Reference, Sketching and Modelling, and Domains. The interdisciplinary design process results from these actions and sources, and the role of the socio-hydrological perspective across these elements. It informed the Frame of Reference by providing a temporally structured understanding of hydrological processes, technological interventions, governance arrangements, and societal practices, supporting the formulation of Guiding Themes grounded in long-term landscape dynamics. During Experimenting and Sketching and Modelling, the framework enabled students to test spatial ideas against hydrological processes and temporal scales; however, it proved less effective in conveying the magnitude and dynamics of short-term hydrological processes specific to the local context.

The paper demonstrates how socio-hydrological, temporally structured frameworks can function as mediating devices in interdisciplinary design processes, while also highlighting the need to complement such approaches with deeper quantitative engagement to strengthen context-specific climate-adaptive strategies.