Ensuring that information generated by scientists can be effectively understood and used by decision makers is challenging. Despite current interest in interactive figures, we believe that the potential of extending interactive figures into web-based decision support tool prototypes, which can better bridge this communication gap and generate more actionable science, is still under-appreciated. The development of these tools used to require proficiency in specialized programming languages (e.g., JavaScript and CSS). However, recent web-application development frameworks (e.g., Shiny and Bokeh) have enabled the creation of these tools within programming languages that quantitative ecologists frequently use (e.g., R and Python). We have recently provided a 3-day course at the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) on using Shiny/R for the development of decision support tools. Here we describe this course, the tools developed by course participants, and their perceptions regarding barriers and incentives for tool development.
Results/Conclusions
We first describe the main aspects of the developed curriculum for this course. Next, we describe the wide range of tools that were developed by participants, illustrating the breadth of socio-environmental issues that can benefit from these tools. Finally, we summarize information provided by course participants on the perceived benefits and challenges regarding the creation of these tools to generate actionable science. We end this talk with ideas and suggestions regarding how some of these challenges can be overcome. We believe that the creation of these decision support tools is an opportunity for ecologists to better harness the data revolution and translate research to better inform decision-making.