Funding Opportunity: Bridging Knowledge to Action - Using Data to Develop Equitable Outcomes or Solutions to Climate Hazards and Other Disasters

Understanding and Overcoming Data Biases to Enable More Equitable and Reliable Flood Alert

Project Director (PD): Jamie Padgett
PD Organization: Rice University
Project Location: Houston, TX
Award Amount: $300,000

Overview: This project addresses a need for timely and reliable information on flood conditions and their impacts, which hamper response, public health and safety in communities affected by severe storms. Via community-engaged research conducted in partnership with the City of Houston’s Health Page 5 of 20 Department (HHD), we derive and pilot a new framework for Equitable and Reliable Flood Alert Systems (ERFAS). This new framework targets the biases and inequities in data quality and availability in underserved communities by providing a smart system that fuses data from diverse sources (e.g. radar-based, authoritative, camera, social media, sensor) while positioning flood estimates in the context of the community. Four thrusts underpin this research: 1) Thrust 1 measures social vulnerability, including a new flood-related health hazards composite metric (FHSV), providing a tailored lens through which to view social equity of information. 2) Thrust 2 characterizes the data sources that may underpin flood alert systems in terms of their availability, reliability, and biases to equitably predict flood conditions and their impacts such as access to critical facilities. 3) Thrust 3 overcomes the limitations of traditional systems by fusing data for robust, real-time, equitable estimates of flooding and its impacts. 4). Thrust 4 engages community partners and stakeholders in ERFAS development and testing, including informant interviews and scenario immersion. While piloted in the underserved, minority, low income region of Hunting Bayou in Houston, the methods are portable to address injustices that other communities face regarding data biases to support decision-making related to public health and safety during floods.

Resources

Final Report Recipient Summary
Understanding and Overcoming Data Biases to Enable More Equitable and Reliable Flood Alert

Linking Coastal-Watershed Resilience to Urban Reinvestment: Build Baton Rouge and Louisiana Watershed Initiative Region 7

Project Director (PD): Rebeca de Jesus Crespo
PD Organization: Louisiana State University
Project Location: East Baton Rouge Parish, LA
Award Amount: $298,259

Overview: Climate driven events have caused massive population displacements across the U.S., triggering spikes in housing demand into safer “receiving communities.” The resulting urbanization patterns often reflect our history of segregation and car-oriented development, leading to urban disinvestment and sprawl, which in turn contribute to additional environmental hazards, such as floods, and exacerbate social inequalities. Proactive planning approaches are needed for urban development that is informed by climate resilience and housing equity. For this purpose, our study will develop a decision-support tool for classifying parcels within a region in terms of their urban revitalization and flood hazard mitigation potential. We will evaluate legal, planning, and policy instruments to propose ways for implementing this decision-support tool in the creation of new land disposition policies that maximize social, financial and environmental resilience. We will conduct our study in East Baton Rouge (EBR), Louisiana, a receiving community in the aftermath of Katrina, and partner with the Louisiana Watershed Initiative and Build Baton Rouge (BBR). Our focal program will be the BBR Land Banks, a program to return vacant, abandoned and/or deteriorated (VAD) properties into productive use in alignment with community needs. Our partners will help inform the project through stakeholder engagement efforts aimed at reevaluating land development needs, crowdsourcing data and information, and developing capacity as it relates to the planning and decision-making process. Our project outputs will help improve resilience of historically segregated and underinvested communities and increase the equity considerations applied to the reuse of VAD properties in receiving communities.

Resources

Final Report Recipient Summary
Linking Coastal-Watershed Resilience to Urban Reinvestment: Build Baton Rouge and Louisiana Watershed Initiative Region 7

Incorporating Equity and Social Vulnerability into the Design of Flood Risk Mitigation Strategies

Project Director (PD): David Johnson
PD Organization: Purdue University
Project Location: St. Mary Parish, LA
Award Amount: $299,913

Overview: We propose to leverage publicly available data and models from major planning efforts in Louisiana to enable local and regional planning authorities to apply an equity lens to the design and evaluation of nonstructural flood risk mitigation strategies (e.g., elevating houses in place, floodproofing, voluntary acquisitions and managed retreat). We will develop an analysis workflow and decision support system (DSS) that enables exploration of how a nonstructural program’s design and performance would vary depending on the characterization and strength of decision-maker preferences for equity and social vulnerability versus economic benefit (e.g., reduction in average annual losses and flood insurance premiums). We will convene a scoping workshop with local/regional planners, residents, and other stakeholders to identify decision-relevant measures of the impacts nonstructural risk mitigation strategies would have on equity, social vulnerability, resilience, and economic risk. A multi-objective optimization algorithm will identify efficient strategies for allocating a user-specified budget in a manner consistent with any set of relative preferences for the outcome measures, and the prospective outcomes will be summarized interactive visualizations of the results that not only show the attributes and performance of a particular strategy, but that also compare and aggregate across strategies to identify actions that are common to strategies founded upon a wide range of preferences. Collaborating partners will provide regular feedback to ensure the DSS provides actionable information.

Resources

Final Report Recipient Summary
Incorporating Equity and Social Vulnerability into the Design of Flood Risk Mitigation Strategies

Heat Vulnerability Playbook: Preparing Tampa’s At-Risk Communities for Extreme Heat

Project Director (PD): Taryn Sabia
PD Organization: University of South Florida
Project Location: Tampa, FL
Award Amount: $299,603

Overview: The City of Tampa is fortunate to have a highly productive urban tree canopy which helps mitigate direct sun exposure and reduces cooling costs. Urban tree cover provides significant benefits to human health and can reduce the impacts of climate hazards. However, studies suggest that tree cover is often inequitably distributed (McDonald, 2021). The Tampa Tree Canopy and Urban Forest Analysis is an invaluable data set, utilized to inform policy decisions in the Urban Forest Management Plan. This project will evaluate the forthcoming Tree Canopy study update as it applies to the City of Tampa Parks & Recreation Master Plan as well as the Urban Forest Management Plan. Evaluation of tree canopy data and social vulnerability indicators will inform decision-making, engagement, and recommendations through an equity lens. The project will seek more equitable outcomes associated with mitigating climate hazards in the context of extreme heat by analyzing the accessibility and quality of parks and outdoor spaces, potential cooling centers, and other resources to generate equity-informed strategies within the City’s Parks and Recreation Master Plan and the Urban Forest Management Plan. The product, a Heat Resiliency Playbook, will be a working document, designed to reflect real-time data collection, feedback, and the evolving needs of the community. While focusing on East Tampa, the Playbook will be designed for flexibility, to produce unique outcomes that reflect the complexity of each community’s needs.

Resources

Final Report Recipient Summary
Heat Vulnerability Playbook: Preparing Tampa’s At-Risk Communities for Extreme Heat

Equity Informed Climate Resilience Planning for a Texas Gulf Coastal Golden Triangle At-Risk Community

Project Director (PD): Stephanie Glenn
PD Organization: Houston Advanced Research Center
Project Location: Port Arthur, TX
Award Amount: $274,243

Overview: The EQUIP PA project will examine the City of Port Arthur, Texas’ Disaster Recovery and Resiliency Plan (DRRP) and revise it into an updated community-led, climate data driven, and equity-informed resilience plan. Community In-Power and Development Association (CIDA) has worked with Port Arthur residents and local organizations to address environmental and public health issues for over 20 years. The Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) is a nonprofit research organization committed to sustainability and has experience developing data visualizations as communication tools and working with stakeholders to identify and assess barriers to community resilience. Jupiter Data Factory has participated in development of several assessments and tools for the Texas Upper Coast. CIDA and HARC have partnered to develop the Port Arthur/Golden Triangle Environmental Justice Initiative with the support of the City of Port Arthur and multiple local organizations. Port Arthur is an at-risk community, facing a wide range of concerns, including climate disasters, disproportionate risk, and environmental hazards. Deliverables of this project will include: A case study that documents the collaborative planning process; An updated community-led, climate data driven, and equity-informed DRRP; An analysis that examines the similarities and differences between the original and equity-informed plan including a discussion about the community partners’ reflection on the planning process, output, and potential outcomes; and, An online project portal with data, visualization and video resources that document the planning process to be used as a model framework for equity-informed climate resilience planning along the Gulf Coast.

Resources

Final Report Recipient Summary
Equity Informed Climate Resilience Planning for a Texas Gulf Coastal Golden Triangle At-Risk Community

Democratizing Data for Equitable Recovery

Project Director (PD): Allison Plyer
PD Organization: Nonprofit Knowledge Works (The Data Center)
Project Location: Liberty and Calhoun Counties, Florida
Award Amount: $300,000

Overview: Disasters exacerbate inequity: people with fewer resources struggle most to recover, and recovery programs have high barriers such that only applicants with the greatest capacity can successfully secure resources. Advancing equity in the context of climate hazards requires identifying communities with the greatest needs and prioritizing them for investment. The Data Center and Shimburg Center propose to work with the Appalachee Regional Planning Commission to increase the capacity of the Appalachee Regional Planning Council (ARPC) in the Florida panhandle to gather and disseminate data that will move the region toward a more equitable recovery (following Hurricane Michael) and greater resilience. ARPC will enhance their climate/disaster relevant data intermediary function for their 9-county region with a specific focus on Calhoun and Liberty counties. This team proposes to employ user centered design concepts to transform the existing Long-term Recovery Plans (LTRP) for each county into forward-thinking equity-based plans leveraging novel data resources. This project will leverage Shimberg’s extensive Clearinghouse of statewide data and The Data Center’s expertise in democratization of actionable, data to in catalyze major local decisions addressing inequities. Innovative outreach efforts that reach beyond digital will be employed to hear voices of most disadvantaged. This project will exceed similar data dissemination efforts by ensuring community and decision makers are able to directly utilize the data and to catalyze a common understanding of needed actions and priorities. Many communities have asked for guidebooks on how to replicate The Data Center’s capabilities in democratizing data. The case study would meet this demand.

Resources

Final Report Recipient Summary
Democratizing Data for Equitable Recovery

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Funding Opportunity: Bridging Knowledge to Action - Using Data to Develop Equitable Outcomes or Solutions to Climate Hazards and Other Disasters

Awarded 2021

Resources

Awarded Projects

My Academies

Funding Opportunity: Bridging Knowledge to Action - Using Data to Develop Equitable Outcomes or Solutions to Climate Hazards and Other Disasters

Awarded 2021

Resources

Awarded Projects