National Environmental Science Program Climate Systems Hub – Knowledge Broker Social Network Analysis Full Report

September 2, 2026

The Climate Systems Hub is one of four multi-disciplinary research hubs funded through the Australian Government’s National Environmental Science Program (NESP). A distinguishing feature of the Climate Systems Hub is its interjurisdictional knowledge brokering team.

State, territory and local governments are key end users for tailored climate science. To reach them, the Hub has built a network of state and territory Knowledge Brokers, with dedicated co-funded roles in NSW, Victoria, WA and SA, and a National Knowledge Broker who supports these roles. Other jurisdictions are covered through a buddy system involving regular check-ins and information-sharing sessions by various members of the team. Through the buddy arrangement, the team covers the Northern Territory, the ACT, Tasmania, and Queensland, which do not have a resident Knowledge Broker. Two of the five roles are part-time (SA at 0.2 FTE, WA at 0.1 FTE).

These Knowledge Brokers sit at the interface between climate scientists and decision-makers. They help to ensure research is co-designed and co-produced with the people who need it to inform their decisions. Despite growing recognition of the value that knowledge brokers can add in applied research programs, the empirical evidence base for these roles remains limited, particularly in the Australian context.

First Person Consulting (FPC) was engaged to undertake a Social Network Analysis (SNA) of the Knowledge Broker team’s network. SNA is a relational mapping technique that generates visual and quantitative representations of the connections between actors in a network.

The findings below align to the project objectives, and taken together, point to a consistent conclusion: the Knowledge Brokers have, to a large extent, created the networks they sit in, and they are the ones who hold those networks together.

1. The connections in the network are valued by those within it. Almost all (94%) of survey respondents believe their interactions with Knowledge Brokers contributed to their work or thinking in some way. Over half of Knowledge Broker–respondent interactions were rated as contributing to work or thinking on climate change either ‘quite a lot’ or ‘a great deal’. Just over half (57%) of interactions were rated as strengthening access to relevant people or networks. Respondents most frequently valued the Knowledge Brokers’ ability to translate complex climate science into accessible insights, the Knowledge Brokers’ role as an efficient point of contact across networks, and the two-way nature of the brokering relationship, including feeding user needs back to researchers.
2. The project produced an in-depth understanding of the Knowledge Broker network. The map covers 924 individuals, 1,881 relationships, all eight states and territories, and 220 unique organisations. The literature has consistently identified the absence of established methods for assessing knowledge broker effectiveness as a barrier to the sustained implementation of these roles (Cvitanovic et al., 2017). This project has demonstrated how such things can be undertaken.
3. The Knowledge Brokers are the connective tissue of the network. The five Knowledge Brokers account for 86% of the connections in a network of 924 individuals. If the Brokers were removed (leaving 919 actors), the network would fragment. The next most connected non-Broker would hold ten connections, and very few common third parties link different parts of the network to one another. The Knowledge Brokers bridge researchers to decision-makers, one jurisdiction to another, and state government to federal climate science. Without them, the information pathways this network represents would largely be ad hoc and fragmented.
4. The Knowledge Brokers connect state and territory governments into national climate science and federal policy infrastructure. Across every jurisdiction, the network extends into national climate science agencies (CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology, the Australian Climate Service, Natural Hazards Research Australia) and into Climate Systems Hub-affiliated researchers at partner universities. It also reaches into federal policy departments such as the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW), the Climate Change Authority and Parks Australia.
5. The four Knowledge Broker-hosted jurisdictions show distinct network characteristics shaped by local institutional contexts. South Australia’s network has extensive local government engagement (39 individuals across 24 councils, a feature unique to SA in this dataset). Victoria’s network has the highest rate of cross-jurisdictional connection. NSW has a comparatively high indegree (82) relative to the size of their network, giving them the highest recognition-to-network-size ratio of the five Knowledge Brokers. This suggests that the people in their network are particularly aware of and engaged with the
   Knowledge Broker’s role. Western Australia has the strongest connection to national climate science of any state-based jurisdiction, with a quarter of its network affiliated with the Climate Systems Hub, this could be related to the FTE of the WA knowledge broker limiting outreach capabilities.
6. Jurisdictions covered through the buddy system show meaningful connectivity, though it varies. Tasmania is well integrated, with strong engagement from state government and community individuals supported by the Victorian and National Knowledge Brokers. The ACT shows concentrated engagement at the territory environment directorates, supported by the NSW Knowledge Broker.

If you would like to read the summary report here >