SCC-CIVIC-FA Track B: Rural Resiliency Hubs: An Integrated, Community-Centered Approach to Addressing the Resiliency Divide through Rural Public Libraries

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The increasing frequency of catastrophic natural disasters, together with the “resilience divide”—the uneven impact of disasters on vulnerable populations—calls for development of disaster Resiliency Hubs. Public libraries, often called the “crown jewels” of rural infrastructure, provide a range of informational and social services that make them ideal facilities to serve as rural Resiliency Hubs. In this project, an interdisciplinary team of researchers will collaborate with diverse community partners in Calhoun County, Florida, a region that continues to be devastated by 2018’s Hurricane Michael, to establish a transferable community-based assessment and design process that leverages the assets of a given area while also identifies the gaps in resiliency-related needs to transform rural libraries into Resiliency Hubs. The expanded capabilities may include, for example, mapping technologies to inform disaster planning including the siting of shelters, aid distribution, and other resources; community behavioral health interventions to address post-disaster trauma; and joint efforts by libraries, schools, churches, and other key local institutions to increase awareness about home-level disaster preparedness.With a collaborative strategy that unites community members, librarians, and researchers, the project team will co-design resiliency hubs sited in public libraries and develop solutions to the cascading impacts of natural disasters. The co-design process will include an in-depth qualitative study of the complex interactions among libraries, residents, local government, and other agencies. Multi-network resiliency measures and multivariate prioritized risk maps will assess community resiliency to guide preparedness and response, including how libraries can further support vulnerable communities. The research team will quantitatively assess the generalizability of lessons learned and develop multi-community transfer learning algorithms to achieve transferrable and scalable solutions for the entire region. The research design brings state-of-the-art optimization and data analytics approaches to bear while being driven by a range of rich qualitative and community data sources that will lead to implementable actions. Knowledge gained from this project will improve our understanding of emergency response operations and contribute to the development of new disaster-related policies and plans for public libraries throughout the United States. The Florida Institute of Government will collaborate with the research team and civic stakeholders to disseminate research findings and recommendations to all 67 Florida counties and other localities. This project is part of the CIVIC Innovation Challenge which is a collaboration of NSF, the Department of Energy's Vehicle Technology Office, and the Department of Homeland Security's Science and Technology Directorate and Federal Emergency Management Agency.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.