High-Level Project Summary
Tulsa's highest levels of social vulnerability are disproportionately concentrated along its flood plains, leaving the populations least equipped to prepare for and recover from hazards such as floods perpetually at risk. Our team conducted research into current disaster mitigation and response approaches in Tulsa concluding that despite the frequency and devastating impact of this natural hazard, the measures are inadequate and not inclusive of marginalized communities. Our proposed solution is a community centric collaborative effort between government entities, local organizations, and citizens willing to lend their skills when the need arises.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Our project creates a community-driven response plan that engages and minimizes disaster impact on underprivileged areas of Tulsa, OK. We have developed an equitable, fiscally feasible, and rapidly deployable infrastructure that provides underprivileged citizens with the tools, relationships, and resources they need to prepare for and mitigate disaster impact.
Our solution leverages pre-existing community relationships, government infrastructure, and individual skill sets to increase climate disaster resilience in areas that have traditionally received less aid from local and federal governments.
Until a City Council district reaches a certain average income, businesses and individuals/families that move into that area automatically opt into a Community Disaster Response System. The names, ages, addresses, health conditions, and occupations of each citizen will be voluntarily entered into a database, and they may be called upon during or after a disaster to support relief efforts. Citizens in districts beyond the income threshold should be made aware of the Response System and given the opportunity to opt in.
By requiring community listening sessions and keeping disaster mitigation/response on City Council agendas, voices from underprivileged areas will inform all policy changes and laws pertaining to those areas. Mitigation efforts that require resources (like Disaster Kits) will be created and distributed to underprivileged communities. Neighborhood-oriented disaster response planning meetings will be sponsored through the program.
City Council members in underprivileged areas will receive additional administrative support for the program. The city will leverage existing relationships with area non-profits and other supportive entities embedded in underprivileged areas to gain trust and execute the different components of the plan.
Grant opportunities abound, and our team feels confident startup funding would be attainable through those avenues. Continued funding would come out of the city’s stormwater fee.
As each community is unique, we hope that by demonstrating how we worked within our city’s established infrastructure to identify issues and solutions, we provide an example for other cities to follow.
What tools, coding languages, hardware, or software did you use to develop your project?
Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), EPA Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, Census Data, CDC’s ATSDR Social Vulnerability Index mapping tool, Google Docs, Google Maps, Microsoft Excel
Space Agency Data
The Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) proved invaluable in providing our team with data necessary to determine social vulnerability in several key areas.
The EPA Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool provided our team with data related to income and housing subsidies.
Hackathon Journey
Challenging, but rewarding overall.
What did you learn?
All of our team developed a deeper breadth of understanding of the inequalities present in Tulsa as a whole. We also learned a good deal about disasters and disaster mitigation history of our city, and developed a basic understanding of typical strategies employed in other cities to combat these same issues.
What inspired your team to choose this challenge?
Acute awareness of observable injustice in our hometown and a genuine desire to quantify and shed light on this unfortunate reality for others.
What was your approach to developing this project?
We began with a brainstorming session based on our individual experiences living within the city to determine what we thought would be a feasible/interesting answer to the prompt. Once we had a few ideas to look into, we began devoting some team resources to looking into the NASA data to see what was available to us and what conclusions we’d be able to draw from it. Once we had a clear argumentative direction, we constructed the paper and the rest is history!
How did your team resolve setbacks and challenges?
We relied on each other's individual experiences and strengths.
References
EPA. Climate Change and Social Vulnerability in the United States: A Focus on Six Impacts. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, EPA 430-R-21-003.
“Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction,” United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), 2019.
Alan Greenblatt, “The City Preparing for Climate Change Without Ever Saying the Words,” https://www.governing.com/archive/gov-tulsa-climate-change-resilience-adaptation-flooding.html (2017). Accessed 10/3/2021.
Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems For Climate Change, Chapter 2. (2014)
CityofTulsa.org, Flood Safety: https://www.cityoftulsa.org/government/departments/engineering-services/flood-control/flood-safety/. Accessed 10/3/2021.
“Average cost of homeowners insurance in 2021,” Bankrate. https://www.bankrate.com/insurance/homeowners-insurance/homeowners-insurance-cost/. Accessed 10/3/2021.
“Find A Cert,” https://community.fema.gov/PreparednessCommunity/s/cert-find-a-program. Accessed 10/3/2021.
Administrator Craig Fugate, Federal Emergency Management Agency, before the United States House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management at the Rayburn House Office Building, March 30, 2011.
“International cooperation for developing countries,” United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/observances/disaster-reduction-day Accessed 10/3/2021.
“From Top-Down to “Community-Centric” Approaches to Early Warning Systems: Exploring Pathways to Improve Disaster Risk Reduction Through Community Participation,” International Journal of Disaster Risk Science volume 7, pages163–174 (2016). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13753-016-0085-6. Accessed 10/3/2021.
“Home | Ready Your LA Neighborhood,” Ready LA. https://www.readyla.org/ Accessed 10/3/2021.
“Red Dirt Ready,” Oklahoma Office of Homeland Security. https://www.ok.gov/reddirtready/VOLUNTEER/Citizen_Corps/. Accessed 10/3/2021.
“Citizen Corps,” Ready.gov. https://www.ready.gov/citizen-corps. Accessed 10/3/2021.
“Home | OKMRC,” Oklahoma Medical Reserve Corps. https://www.okmrc.org/. Accessed 10/3/2021.
“Oklahoma Regional Response System,” OK.gov. https://www.ok.gov/homeland/Regional_Response_System/. Accessed 10/3/2021.
“Emergency Preparedness and Response Services (EPRS),” Oklahoma State Department of Health. https://oklahoma.gov/health/prevention-and-preparedness/emergency-preparedness-and-response.html.
“Prepare | Respond | Recover| Mitigate,” Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security. https://oklahoma.gov/oem.html.
“We are in the business of building disaster resilient communities,” Disaster Resilience Network. https://www.disasterresiliencenetwork.org/
“SDHMAB,” City of Tulsa. https://www.cityoftulsa.org/government/departments/engineering-services/flood-control/sdhmab/
“CDC/ATSDR Social Vulnerability Index,” CDC. https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/placeandhealth/svi/index.html
“Hurricanes,” Episode 9, Season 3 of Netflix-Vox’s Explained.
Tags
#flooding #DisasterResponse #ClimateChange #community #community-centric #community-driven #grassroots #MutualAid
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.