ADAPTE: A tale of diverse teams coming together to do issue-driven interdisciplinary research

This paper examines the opportunities and challenges faced by “Adaptation to the Health Impacts of Air Pollution and Climate Extremes in Latin American Cities” (ADAPTE). ADAPTE is an issue-driven research endeavor that integrates different disciplinary domains to explore the complex nature of urban vulnerability/adaptive capacity to weather and air pollution in Buenos Aires, Bogota, Mexico City and Santiago. The paper also critically reflects on some of the possible challenges to be encountered, along with the benefits to be gleaned, when doing issue-driven research that seeks to be scientifically robust and socially relevant and is defined by such attributes as integration of heterogeneous research domains, interactivity and reflexivity. ADAPTE's efforts to integrate concepts, methods and data from different disciplines were fundamental in the design of a conceptual framework on urban vulnerability. The integrating research question and the use of quantitative and qualitative methods allowed ADAPTE to shed a slightly different light on the nature and interconnections between the different dimensions of urban vulnerability. However, it has proven difficult for us to fully explore the dynamics of urban vulnerability as well as the issues of scale and context. A set of cultural and communication challenges has arisen, not only from the diverse conceptualization approaches, methods, differing terminologies and mechanisms for analyzing and presenting results that ADAPTE has attempted to integrate, but also from institutional and interpersonal issues affecting team interactions.

► Issue-driven research seeks to be scientifically robust and socially relevant. ► Combined methods help shed light on the dynamics of urban vulnerability. ► However, it is difficult to explore issues of scale and context. ► Cultural and communication challenges arise when integrating different disciplines.