Enhancing Transparency in Multidisciplinary Expert Communication

Faced with problems of public acceptance most nuclear waste management organisations now acknowledge the importance of transparency in their pursuit of solutions for high-level nuclear waste disposal. To make progress the implementing organizations need the trust of other stakeholders in the decision-making process. For such trust these outside stakeholders need knowledge on the grounds for the judgments and decisions made in different scientific and technical disciplines. Transparency is, however, at least as important for the multidisciplinary expert communication itself. As a matter of fact, the transparency of the internal expert interaction processes is a prerequisite for the true transparency of the communication between the implementer and the external stakeholder groups. The introduced conceptual framework has been developed for the identification of the requirements of safety-informed communication in multidisciplinary expert work in nuclear waste management. The framework offers a common thinking model and common concepts which can be utilized in the development of the communication practices. The basis of the framework is on the possibility to understand the safety-critical significance of one's work. The transparency of communication is, for its part, based on making explicit the relevant knowledge necessary for gaining the understanding. This supplementary knowledge, which is related to the substance issues but is not scientific-technical by nature, enhances the experts' awareness of the context of their own contribution and of the background of the other experts' contributions. The common conceptualization and modelling of the knowledge-related dependencies between the tasks make it possible to realize the significance of the supplementary knowledge for transparent communication in actual situations. They also facilitate the recognition of the need for different types of supplementary knowledge in the interfaces between the tasks. By enhancing mutual understanding the models help in the integration of the knowledge produced by different disciplines and in the reconciliation of the requirements of different parties. They also improve the interaction between the domain experts and the experts of safety assessment. Better awareness of the knowledge-related dependencies enhance the unity of the experts' safety conceptions and contributes to more unified communicating practices in the organization. On the basis of its holistic and integrating character, the safety assessment seems to provide a common perspective to the modelling of the work processes. Using it as a tool for understanding the significance of the safety-critical aspects of work will probably make it more accessible for the domain experts. The safety assessment aims at results, which are expected to be transdisciplinary by nature. It can be assumed, that the common conceptualization and modelling with the help of it facilitate the development from multidisciplinarity to true transdisciplinarity in the expert work