SCC-CIVIC-FA Track B Design for Community Resilience: Participatory Civic Technology to Close the Last-Mile Disaster Relief Gap in Puerto Rico

我们寻求试行一项参与性的公民技术倡议Re Connect，以弥合最后一英里的救灾差距，并通过软件技术、数据智能和社会基础设施为服务不足的社区创造长期的复原力。在过去三年广泛的合作研究和设计工作的基础上，我们的目标是动员、通知和协调居民、社区团体以及政府和非政府实体在灾害管理方面的集体行动，以便在正确的时间、正确的地点做出正确的反应。该试点计划将可访问、可靠和用户友好的软件应用程序与包容性的社区参与计划相结合，使居民能够充当“社区大使”，将关键信息众包，以弥合面临灾难时基本资源和服务提供与社区需求之间的差距。通过为期12个月的第二阶段，我们的目标是为波多黎各各地至少50,000名居民提供众包信息，目标是在未来五年为整个群岛产生一个可持续、可扩展和可转移的倡议。面对气候变化，岛屿和沿海社区，如波多黎各的社区，将面临更频繁和更具破坏性的灾难，如飓风和洪水。我们的倡议旨在通过以下几个方面更好地为未来的灾难做好准备：1)加强社会纽带，将其作为建立复原力和生存机制的核心。2)整合当地知识，使灾害管理更加以人为本、更加有效。3)加强协作，以此作为提高复原力和降低风险的途径。4)为在其他情况下建设抗灾能力和减少风险提供宝贵的经验教训。我们的项目利用参与性设计研究建立一个公民技术倡议，以增强社区抗灾能力的几个关键因素：1)将当地知识和信息纳入总体减灾和应对灾害活动；2)通过丰富灾害多发地区关键利益攸关方群体内部和之间的社会资本来支持合作；以及3)加强和促进非正式行为者在应急期间的亲社会行为。我们聚集了一个跨学科团队，在波多黎各设计、验证和试验更具适应性和包容性的参与式民用技术解决方案，并对其他相关背景产生影响，如加勒比海岛屿、中美洲和美国墨西哥湾沿岸。我们的发现将有助于更好地理解克服阻碍灾害信息和知识有效管理的挑战，从而改善个人、社区团体和正式机构之间的协调和合作，以实现灾害管理目标。该项目由公民和既定的激励竞争研究计划(EPSCoR)共同资助。公民项目由NSF、国土安全部和能源部联合资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

We seek to pilot a participatory civic technology initiative, re+connect, to close the last-mile disaster relief gap and create long-term resilience for underserved communities with software technology, data intelligence, and social infrastructure. Building on extensive collaborative research and design efforts from the past three years, we aim to mobilize, inform, and coordinate collective action across residents, community groups, and governmental and non-governmental entities in disaster management to direct the right responses, to the right places, at the right time. The pilot initiative integrates an accessible, reliable, and user-friendly software application with an inclusive community engagement program to enable and empower residents to act as “community ambassadors” to crowdsource key information to bridge the gap between essential resources and services provision and community needs in the face of disasters. Through the 12-month stage 2 period, we aim to crowdsource information for at least 50,000 residents from across Puerto Rico, with the goal of yielding a sustainable, scalable, and transferable initiative for the entire archipelago in the next five years. In the face of climate change, island, and coastal communities, such as those in Puerto Rico, will face more frequent and destructive disasters such as hurricanes and floods. Our initiative aims better prepare for future disasters through the following aspects: 1) Strengthen social bonds as the core of building resilience and survival mechanisms. 2) Integrate local knowledge to make disaster management more human-centered and effective. 3) Enhance collaboration as a path to building resilience and reducing risk. 4) Provide valuable lessons for building disaster resilience and risk reduction in other contexts.Our project uses participatory design research to build a civic technology initiative that enhances several key factors of community resilience: 1) including local knowledge and information into overall disaster mitigation and response activities; 2) supporting collaboration through enriching social capital within and across key stakeholder groups in disaster-prone areas; and 3) augmenting and facilitating prosocial behaviors by informal actors during emergency response. We bring together an interdisciplinary team to design, validate, and pilot a more adaptive and inclusive participatory civic technology solution in Puerto Rico, with implications for other relevant contexts such as the Caribbean islands, Central America, and the Gulf Coast of the United States. Our findings will contribute to an improved understanding of overcoming the challenges that hinder the effective management of disaster information and knowledge, leading to improved coordination and collaboration across individuals, community groups, and formal institutions to achieve disaster management goals.This project is jointly funded by CIVIC and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).The CIVIC program is jointly funded by NSF, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Energy.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.