SCC-RCN: Smart Civic Engagement in Rapidly Urbanizing Regions

解决大规模问题，如城市化地区的雨水管理，需要各种利益攸关方的投入，以及附近城镇之间的协调。然而，体制障碍通常阻碍了协作决策的公开讨论。该团队设想了一种新的方式来增强社区之间的智能连接，并打破跨越地理空间、治理级别和专业类型的障碍：一个适合不同利益相关者需求的知识共享协作平台，一个共同开发的名为TomorrowNow的环境。这个研究合作网络(RCN)将联合来自政府、行业、学术界、流域协会和其他社区团体的区域利益攸关方，指导TomorrowNow的发展，促进不同视角对雨水管理和决策的贡献。由RCN构思的公开可用的多用户环境将对北卡罗来纳州三角地区广泛的利益攸关方和当地居民的意见进行众包。居民将能够在他们生活和工作的地方探索和可视化干预策略，为有关雨水的管理决策提供信息，并提高生活质量。最终，RCN构思的在线游戏不仅将在三角地区提供一个引人入胜的、直观的平台，而且将作为一个模式，在其他地方增强智能和互联社区的能力。这个RCN将协作性地探索使用真实数据和科学模型来展示地点的连接性的多用户、基于网络的协作决策是否可以增加对当地决策的公平参与，提高弱势群体的声音和不同的视角。RCN将联合研究人员和利益相关者规划一个名为TomorrowNow的协作决策环境的设计，该环境使人们能够与城市化的空间显式模型以及与雨水水文(数量)和生物地球化学(质量)相关的变化互动，这是美国城市化地区日益关注的问题。RCN将召集来自北卡罗来纳州研究三角地区的地方和地区政府、非政府组织以及专门从事自然、社会和计算机科学的研究团队的领导人；这些领导人将协作确定改善包容性参与的需求和方法，并允许更广泛的利益攸关方在他们生活和工作的地方探索和设想干预战略。该网络的发展将促进在研究人员、政策制定者和居民之间共同制定可行解决方案的科学，并确定研究方向，以促进新类型的城市化和雨水模型(水文和生物地质化学)，这些模型是严肃游戏用户友好界面所需的。TomorrowNow将使通过共享水网络(及其相关问题，如雨水径流、地表水污染和地下水数量/质量)相连的社区能够协作设计替代未来，优化这些水网络的管理。不同社区的意见将通过调查、半结构化访谈、小组讨论、面对面研讨会和专题讨论会期间的讨论以及通过开放源码在线社区的讨论线索来收集。

Solutions for large-scale problems like stormwater management in urbanizing regions require input from a variety of stakeholders and coordination between nearby cities and towns. However, institutional barriers commonly prevent open discussion for collaborative decision-making. The team envisions a new way to enhance smart connections among communities and break down barriers across geographic space, levels of governance, and types of expertise: a collaborative platform for knowledge-sharing that suits diverse stakeholder needs, a mutually developed environment called TomorrowNow. This Research Collaboration Network (RCN) will unite regional stakeholders from government, industry, academia, watershed associations, and other community groups to guide the development of TomorrowNow, advancing the contribution of diverse perspectives to stormwater management and decision-making. The publicly available, multi-userenvironment conceptualized by the RCN will be transformative for crowdsourcing the opinions of a wide range of stakeholders and local residents in the Triangle region of North Carolina. Residents will be able to explore and visualize intervention strategies in the very places where they live and work, to inform management decisions regarding stormwater and improve quality of life. Ultimately, the online game conceptualized by the RCN will not only provide an engaging, intuitive platform in the Triangle, but will serve as a model to empower smart and connected communities elsewhere.This RCN will collaboratively explore whether multi-user, web-based collaborative decision making using real data and scientific models to show the connectedness of locations could increase equitable participation in local decision-making, elevating the voices of underprivileged groups and diverse perspectives. The RCN will unite researchers and stakeholders to plan the design of a collaborative decision environment, TomorrowNow, which enables people to interact with spatially explicit models of urbanization and associated changes to stormwater hydrology (quantity) and biogeochemistry (quality), problems of increasing concern across urbanizing regions in the US. The RCN will convene leaders from local and regional governments, non-governmental organizations, and research teams specializing in natural, social, and computer sciences in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina; these leaders will collaboratively identify needs and approaches for improving inclusive participation and allowing a wider range of stakeholders to explore and visualize intervention strategies in the places where they live and work. Development of the network will advance the science of co-producing actionable solutions among researchers, policymakers, and residents, as well as identify research directions that advance new genres of urbanization and stormwater models (hydrologic and biogeochemical) needed to underlie the user-friendly interface of a serious game. TomorrowNow will enable communities connected by shared water networks (and their associated problems of stormwater runoff, surface water contamination, and groundwater quantity/quality) to collaboratively design alternative futures that optimize management of those water networks. The input of diverse communities will be collected via surveys, semi-structured interviews, panels, discussions during in-person workshops and symposia, and through discussion threads in an open-source online community.