In September 2017, Puerto Rico, suffered catastrophic damage as category-5 Hurricanes Irma and Maria made direct landfalls on the island. The effect on people’s health and safety was devastating and long-lasting. Due to climate change, places like Puerto Rico are confronting more frequent and destructive disasters; government agencies and offices at all levels are increasingly grappling with the limitations of their resources and capacity to meet the needs of these impacted communities. While individuals and community groups operating outside of the official disaster management system demonstrate adaptability, innovation, and responsiveness in contributing resources together with time, knowledge, and skills, they have been largely undervalued, leading to the marginalization of local information and knowledge in disaster risk reduction. The goal of this project is to engage and empower individuals and communities to become a more integral part of disaster resilience, specifically addressing the structural and social barriers that will lead to improvement in allocation, coordination, and delivery of relief services and supplies.
This project aims to enhance disaster resilience and fill information gaps through development of a new participatory, community mapping platform based on local information and knowledge. It will be developed in Puerto Rico but can serve as a model for efforts in similar locations including the Caribbean islands and the Gulf Coast of the US. The approach brings together citizens, community-based organizations, disaster management and aid agencies, government entities, the private sector, and research institutions to co-design and pilot this user-friendly, reliable, and secure technology platform, supported by collaborative data and governance structures. Integrating community engagement, partnership building, and technology information systems, this project will improve disaster resilience by strengthening community social connectedness, improving local disaster information and knowledge inclusion, and facilitating collaboration and coordination across stakeholders to achieve disaster management goals. This project is in response to the Civic Innovation Challenge program, Track B—Resilience to Natural Disasters—and is a collaboration between NSF and the Department of Homeland Security.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
