Appropriately bounded integration can be a basis for sustainable management of water resources.

Hoffmann, S., C. Pohl, and J. G. Hering. 2017. Methods and procedures of transdisciplinary knowledge integration: empirical insights from four thematic synthesis processes. Ecology and Society 22(1):27. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08955-220127

Treatment of drinking water for arsenic (As) removal has been implemented in centralized facilities worldwide, reflecting the increasingly stringent national and international drinking water standards for As, for which a standard of $10\mathrm{\mu g}/\mathrm{L}$ has been widely adopted. It might therefore be expected that information on the performance of installed treatment processes could serve as basis for process optimization and more-informed decisions on process selection. A review of available information on installed treatment does provide some insight into the scale of implementation, factors driving process selection and difficulties that have arisen in practice (as a complement to more accessible information on bench-scale and pilot-scale studies). The availability of information on treatment performance at full-scale treatment is, however, severely limited. The rapid advances in information technology and consequent elimination of technical barriers to sharing information and knowledge should allow the development of an international, accessible database or even a metadata portal for installed technologies for As removal that would offer the potential to benefit from past and ongoing experience in practice.

“More research is needed” is an iconic catchphrase used by scientists worldwide. Yet policy and management decisions are continually being made with variable levels of reliance on scientific knowledge. Funding agencies have provided incentives for knowledge exchange at the interfaces between science and policy or practice, yet it remains the exception rather than the rule within academic institutions. An important step forward would be the establishment and professionalization of knowledge brokering (i.e., as a complement to existing technology transfer and communications departments). This would require an explicit commitment of resources by both funding agencies and institutions. Many academic scientists are genuinely interested in the applications of their research. This interest could be stimulated by providing support for the process of knowledge brokering and by integrating the natural, social, and engineering sciences to address broad policy- and practice-relevant questions.