| NSF Org: |
CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 16, 2021 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | May 29, 2024 |
| Award Number: | 2133233 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Oleg Sokolsky
osokolsk@nsf.gov (703)292-4760 CNS Division Of Computer and Network Systems CSE Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering |
| Start Date: | October 1, 2021 |
| End Date: | January 31, 2025 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $999,999.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $1,024,999.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2024 = $25,000.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
926 DALNEY ST NW ATLANTA GA US 30318-6395 (404)894-4819 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
222 North Avenue Atlanta GA US 30332-0002 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Special Projects - CNS |
| Primary Program Source: |
01002425DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.070 |
ABSTRACT
This project will engage Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) youth living within frontline coastal communities in disaster resilience planning through mapmaking and advocacy. Map Spot, a creative and accessible mapmaking tool, as well Youth Advocacy for Resilience to Disasters (YARDs), a curriculum adapted from a validated program, will be introduced to educate and empower middle-school age participants to advocate for infrastructural improvements in their neighborhoods related to disasters and their effects. Beyond the potential for the proposed infrastructural improvements to be realized, participating in these activities can help youth increase self and collective efficacy, as well as connect to a broader network of allies and advocates. Research has shown that engaging youth in advocacy and disaster preparedness can substantially enhance disaster resilience. The framework will be with coastal communities on the west side of Savannah, Georgia, where the project team already has significant experience in disaster-related data collection, community engagement, and resilience planning. Following the pilot, the Visualizing Resilience framework will be transferred to other communities at risk of disasters in Georgia and across the United States.
The custom, open source, mapmaking tool and tailored curriculum will guide middle-school aged participants enrolled in after-school clubs to: 1) map the effects of intersecting disasters in their communities and identify infrastructural improvement projects to address them, and; 2) advocate for themselves and their neighbors by presenting their maps to community leaders, local experts and public officials. The project will contribute to research in three different areas: 1) It will strengthen disaster resilience scholarship by illuminating how BIPOC youth, a vulnerable yet relatively understudied group, can promote resilience in their communities; 2) It will introduce and evaluate a tool as well as a paired curriculum for digital civics, which can help BIPOC youth do the work of resilience planning. 3) It will benefit scholarship on youth advocacy by demonstrating its relationship to self-efficacy, collective efficacy, and broadening community networks. These outcomes can contribute to resilience at the individual, group, and societal levels. While youth are directly engaged through Visualizing Resilience, the benefits of this project will extend to their communities, as well as the public officials, local organizations, and resilience researchers that envision a more sustainable future for all.
This project is part of the CIVIC Innovation Challenge which is a collaboration of NSF, Department of Energy Vehicle Technology Office, Department of Homeland Security 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.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
This project investigated how community resilience to natural disasters might be enhanced by providing young people with hands-on educational experiences in data advocacy. To carry out this investigation, an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and Savannah State University worked with local environmental advocates, local government, and the public school system in Savannah, Georgia, over one year. This collaboration resulted in the development and evaluation of a 14-session curriculum, called Youth Advocacy for Resilience to Disasters (YARDs), in which young people developed the skills necessary to understand which communities are at risk from natural disasters, how they might recover, and what can be done to mitigate the long-term impacts. In addition, the team created a bespoke map-making platform, called Map Spot, to support YARDs participants in making expressive representations of their communities from a combination of scientific evidence and their own lived experiences.
The YARDs curriculum is comprised of a series of interrelated modules, including:
1) A module on the science behind natural disasters and their implications for local communities;
2) A module on the role of advocacy in community change, in which participants learn to identify and communicate with local civic leaders;
3) A module on the use of data and mapmaking as advocacy tools, in which participants use Map Spot to both represent and reimagine their communities;
4) A module on the potential of green infrastructure to mitigate the effects of natural disasters, in which participants run a mobile floodplain simulation and identify strategies relevant for their communities and present them to outside audiences.
This multi-part curriculum was facilitated three separate times for middle-school age youth, by local public school teachers in close collaboration with the project team. In summer 2022 and 2023, the curriculum was used to structure a week-long youth camp at Georgia Tech’s Savannah campus. In fall 2022, the curriculum was run as a seven-week after-school program in a Title I school. Participants in YARDs had opportunities to present their strategies for disaster resilience to peers, parents, teachers, school administrators, outsider researchers, and local public officials.
The primary intellectual merit of the project is as a successful model of interdisciplinary research collaboration motivated by real-world goals, in which researchers developed multiple innovations, YARDs and Map Spot, through direct engagement with local communities and public institutions. For each of the three principal research areas involved in the project, Sociology, Data Visualization, and Urban Planning, the interdisciplinary research model and its specific disciplinary findings have been distributed through a variety of academic publications and public talks. The broader impact of the project lies in the potential of its material outcomes, including the YARDs curriculum and the Map Spot platform, which are open access and are meant to inspire a wide variety of educational and civic innovations related to disaster resilience.
Last Modified: 06/27/2025
Modified by: Allen Thomas Hyde
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