Digital Platforms for Climate-Resilient and Sustainable Planning: Lessons on Nature-Based Solutions from a Louisiana Watershed-Scale Case Study

Digital platforms have been increasingly adopted to support sustainable climate-resilient planning by implementing nature-based solutions (NbSs) as an effective short-term strategy. Although existing studies have deepened the operational performance of digital platforms, less attention has been paid to their role as knowledge infrastructure for shaping sustainability-relevant planning practices. This paper examines the informative structure of the Louisiana Watershed Initiative (LWI) platform. This is intended as a relevant case study to investigate how digital platforms organize data, information, and knowledge to support NbS-oriented climate resilience at the watershed scale. The study adopts a mixed-method case-study approach, combining an interpretative analysis of the platform’s digital and informational architecture with targeted tests of NbS-oriented decision-support interfaces. The results highlight the operational and cognitive conditions in shaping NbS prioritization processes—notably, those related to scaling, informational structuring, and governance alignment. While the platform effectively supports digital decision-making processes at regional and watershed levels, limitations emerge regarding how ecological knowledge is produced, interpreted, and operationalized within planning frameworks, with implications for the long-term sustainability and robustness of planning decisions. The lesson learnt by the analysis of the LWI identifies the conditions under which the analytical approach can be replicated and highlights insights relevant to both the design and evaluation of digital decision-support platforms in NbS-oriented planning contexts.