Case study 10
Academic water management initiative
Water Diplomacy is an approach to complex water conflicts developed at Tufts, MIT and Harvard, and the site carries the whole programme around it: a case study wiki, a research coordination network, an annual workshop, a doctoral programme and a publication record. TechnicalBind delivered engineering work on that platform. The relationship is with the initiative and its site, and we are not claiming the universities as clients.
Context
Water Diplomacy reframes water conflict from allocating water to sharing benefit from water resources. Around that sit AquaPedia, a managed wiki of water management case studies, a National Science Foundation supported Research Coordination Network, an annual train the trainer workshop for senior water managers held in Boston, and an interdisciplinary doctoral programme at Tufts University.
The challenge
Most of the content here is written by researchers and practitioners rather than by a communications team, which makes this a content management problem before it is a design problem. A case study wiki grows in shapes nobody specified up front, timelines and key document sets need to stay editable by the people who own them, and a workshop cohort needs a private space that does not leak into the public site. The platform has to hold all of that without a developer standing between a contributor and a page.
The solution
A content platform where the wiki, the blog, the press record, the timelines and the key document library are all separately maintained content types rather than hand built pages, plus a registration path into the network and a private forum for workshop participants. The publication record, including the Water Diplomacy book, is linked out to its actual retailers rather than being restated on the site.
Check it yourself
No numbers on this page ask to be believed. Open the site and you will find each of these.
Tell us what the software has to do and who has to use it. You will get a straight answer about scope, cost and whether we are the right people for it.
Talk about your project
