Building the tools to speed up the policy design cycle: letting policy makers work with hydrologic models themselves through eWaterCycle

In drafting policy briefs, or choosing which scenario to run, scientists inevitably make political decisions, from obvious ones (how to weigh the importance of one land use type over another) to more hidden ones (using Kling-Gupta efficiency, which focuses more on low flow, to calibrate a model instead of Nash-sutcliffe efficiency, which focuses more on high flows). Ideally one wants to design the policymaker scientist interaction such that most political decisions are made by the policymaker, without requiring her/him to become an expert hydrologist in the process. Any remaining (inevitable) decisions made by the hydrologist should be as transparent as possible.