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Title: Resilience Webtool: Engaging Community Partners to Humanize Data for Use in Local Resilience Planning in Idaho
Abstract: Advancements in technology have made hazard data increasingly available. However, officials in rural communities with limited resources often face challenges in accessing, interpreting, and applying the data to assess vulnerabilities and plan future development. Furthermore, the hazard data not being paired with relevant population and infrastructure data makes vulnerability assessments difficult. To address this challenge, this project aims to co-create a web tool with Valley County, Idaho decision-makers following a user-centered design approach, consolidating hazards, social vulnerability, and infrastructure data to help local officials with risk management, decision-making, and resilience planning. The project started with listening sessions, identifying data gaps, community needs, and building relationships with the community partners, including emergency managers, project planners, decision-makers, and health officials of the county. To select web tool features and datasets, we held focus groups and one-on-one meetings with community partners. Recently, the team conducted a workshop in Valley County to test the beta version of this web tool (bit.ly/vc_betatool), where the tool received positive feedback. In the last phase of the project, the team will finalize the web tool, incorporating additional feedback from the community partners, and develop a sustainability plan to ensure this tool is usable for resilience planning for years to come. This study is an example of successfully engaging community partners toward developing user-centered tools for resilience planning in rural communities in Idaho. Even though many counties and states have web tools to help with their risk management, resilience planning and decision making, they lack a proper framework regarding how to effectively involve the community partners in developing these tools. My research, as a part of this project, evaluates the community partner engagement process based on the Five-Feature Framework for Stakeholder Engagement in Natural Resource Management and looks into community partners’ satisfaction with the overall engagement process. I follow an explanatory qualitative research methodology where I interview the community partners using a structured questionnaire to understand their satisfaction with this community engaged research. I will qualitatively analyze the data collected from the interviews and look into themes & patterns to understand how to successfully engage community partners in developing user centered web tools for increasing community resilience. This study will provide insights into the process and dynamics of effectively engaging community partners. By doing so, the research can benefit the community in terms of their risk management and help them with decision making to make their communities more resilient in the face of disasters and vulnerability.
Advisor: Brittany Brand
Committee: Chris Birdsall, Keith T. Weber