Enhancing resilience in water management agriculture: A Social Network Analysis approach to identify Leverage Points for climate adaptation

Abstract

Climate change exposes vulnerabilities in water-agriculture governance by straining information flows, collaboration, and norms. This study couples Social Network Analysis (SNA) with resilience theory to examine how Murcia’s actor configurations enable absorption of shocks, adaptation, and transformation. Using COSMIC—a platform co-developed with HDA that integrates multilingual surveys, real-time validation, and instant network visualization—stakeholders provided organizational profiles, mapped inter-actor ties, and identified leverage points. COSMIC generated an undirected graph and computed node metrics (degree, betweenness, closeness, eigenvector) plus network indicators (density, modularity). Preliminary findings reveal a polycentric structure: a core of interconnected institutions sustains redundant pathways (absorptive resilience), while clusters suggest opportunities for cross-sector collaboration (adaptive resilience). Qualitative interviews confirm public and academic actors perceive high cohesion—validating hubs’ buffering roles—whereas civil society’s lower cohesion ratings expose outreach needs. Divergent views on sustainability versus productivity highlight “intent”-level leverage points requiring value-focused dialogues. COSMIC’s survey-to-analysis workflow enables rapid diagnosis of structural strengths and weaknesses, guiding parameter-level (data-sharing), feedback-level (incentives, mediation), and intent-level (value alignment) interventions. These preliminary insights will be tested and refined across remaining FARMWISE case studies.