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Defining the Expert Opinion: Truth, power, and the challenge of translation in regional adaptation planning - The growing acceptance of "alternative facts," in public discourse alongside the proliferation of misinformation and disinformation poses a challenge to democratic governance and evidence-based planning. While historical precedents exist, the current context has exacerbated the negative consequences for public welfare. In the context of transportation planning and regional governance of climate adaptation in particular, implications of this trend are particularly concerning. As the field attempts to move beyond traditional level-of-service (LOS) metrics to encompass broader priorities (externalities) such as climate resilience, pollution control, and equity, access to reliable data and widespread acceptance of performance metrics is crucial. Recent intervention into availability and content of certain federal datasets, including those associated with demographics, environment, and health call into question the ability of governing authorities to undertake long-term planning processes without a reliable information base.
This paper will first examine the implications of emerging trends in knowledge production in the context of regional planning for adaptation with a focus on impacts to Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and other collaborating authorities (e.g., local governments, coalitions, and state agencies). In the course of doing so, it will consider how the purging, obfuscation, and revision of foundational input data for metrics associated with capture of externalities (in this case, those associated with climate adaptation) may affect the overall planning process and the capture of externalities. Second, this paper will review processes for development of politically agnostic metrics and methodologies for data collection and distribution, as well as knowledge production that remain resilient to political interference. By tracing the historical and contemporary impacts of the politicization of data and rejection of “expert opinion”, assessing current challenges in regional transportation planning for adaptation to climate impacts faced by MPOs, and identifying emerging methodologies for safeguarding knowledge, this paper will ideally begin to lay a groundwork for more viable approaches to governance of adaptation planning at the regional scale.
