...
Based on first-hand experience as well as practical cases described in literature we may identify a variety of symptoms associated with the above-described sub-optimal cooperation between specialists and users of specialist knowledge. Although the existence of some kind of 'gap' is widely acknowledged, no adequate framework seems to be available to describe what goes wrong and to suggest potential ways to bridge this gap. To remedy this problem, the work reported in this thesis aimed to "contribute to the insight in the situations and processes that are associated with a 'gap' between specialists and users of specialist knowledge that has been observed in practice and use this insight to develop a methodological approach to match specialist knowledge with end user needs". The framework for analysis, suggested in this thesis, regards coastal management as a chain of interdependent problem solvers that rely on each other for information. Each interaction in this chain involves two actors with a certain degree of knowledge and responsibility.
...