Towards systematic planning of small-scale hydrological intervention-based research

Abstract. Many small-scale water development initiatives are accompanied by hydrological research to study either the form of the intervention or its impacts. Humans influence both the development of intervention and research, and thus one needs to take human agency into account. This paper focuses on the effects of human actions in the development of the intervention and its associated hydrological research, as hydrological research is often designed without adequate consideration of how to account for human agency and that these effects have not yet been discussed explicitly in a systematic way. In this paper, we propose a systematic planning for hydrological research, based on evaluating three hydrological research efforts targeting small-scale water development initiatives in Vietnam, Kenya, and Indonesia. The main purpose of the three cases was to understand the functioning of interventions in their hydrological contexts. Aiming for better decision-making on hydrological research in small-scale water intervention initiatives, we propose two analysis steps, including (1) consideration of possible surprises and possible actions and (2) cost–benefit analysis. By performing the two analyses continuously throughout small-scale hydrological intervention-based initiatives, effective hydrological research can be achieved.