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busways
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Department of transit and public
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works, commissioners, neighbors
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and community members,
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employers, transit alliance, use
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Facebook and digital tools for
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outreach
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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000041.t004
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PLOS CLIMATE
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Advancing a hyperlocal approach to community engagement in climate adaptation
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PLOS Climate | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000041 June 8, 2022 20 / 26
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The design thinking portion of the workshop coalesced items of greatest concern to propose desired outcomes and viable paths forward with the input of community leaders. That
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residents of the two neighborhoods focused on different sets of threats and vulnerabilities
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underscores the importance of the hyperlocal approach to capture greater nuance than more
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conventional solicitations of public opinion (e.g., townhalls or public hearings). The combination of photovoice and design thinking also enables individuals first to contemplate issues in
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their neighborhoods that concern them, and second to hear, in a constructive space, the concerns of others. Having shared their lived experiences, participants are enabled by the design
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thinking process to envision, and with the partnership of community organizations and government agency representatives, implement desired outcomes, transforming the common
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practice of expert-driven, top-down proposals that seek community buy-in, into a community-based collaborative process. For policymakers, the potential to integrate the ICRA with
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workshop results can enhance the capacity to provide locally scaled initiatives.
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Overall, our approach addresses multiple gaps in the literature. First, we address calls for
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improving methods of community engaged processes [e.g., 14, 15] by demonstrating how a
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unique integration of photovoice and design thinking–developed through the lens of communication design [e.g., 19–21] can transform the shortcomings of each process as they are currently practiced into a more desired and normative process. Specifically, the HyLo method
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addresses two of the major limitations reported in the photovoice literature–engagement with
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policy makers and critical discussion [41, 44]. Our process builds relationships with policy
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makers from the beginning of the engagement, with member coming from the first workshop
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and, as their commitment grows, leveraging their connections to invite and include more (and
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more relevant) participation by members of other governmental offices in the final exhibition
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and discussion. The outcomes of this integrated process were evident as community members
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voiced their grievances and frustrations as well their proposals for solutions, enabling policy
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makers to dive deeper into the concerns raised, gather additional information, and provide
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both immediate and long-range assistance.
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Additionally, the inclusion of design thinking provides a mechanism to increase critical discussion around problems and solutions in ways that individual presentations of photovoice
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stories do not [41, 44]. When looking at the results of photovice, we see primarily the reporting
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of the stories and narratives–reporting on critical discussions, moves toward solutions, or
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engagement with policy makers is seldom reported. Additionally, through this process of integrating photovoice and design thinking we show how the process of design thinking can
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become a grassroots process focused on the lived experiences of community members.
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Through bringing their own experiences to life through photovoice, then using those narratives to drive toward solutions, the process is flipped from the typical top-down approach
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focused on a predetermined set of options present in many design thinking studies [47, 50].
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In addition to the advances in community engaged processes that our method brings, we
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see this work adding to the growing body of knowledge focused on local knowledge and local
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adaptation. Specifically, our work addresses calls for comparative analysis of local communities
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through community based research approaches [35] and demonstrates how local perceptions
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of risks and needs vary within a larger decision-making geography. While the two communities in our study have somewhat similar risk profiles in our ICRA, the process of hyperlocal
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storytelling and design thinking show the variation in perceived risk and opportunity by community, and that there is room for adaptation beyond the large scale infrastructure approaches
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that are prevalent in South Florida.
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This work also contributes to advancing the body of knowledge on mapping and the role of
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geospatial data in examining risk [22]. We demonstrate a process by which geospatial data on
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social, built environment, and physical risk can be combined to provide a different way to
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PLOS CLIMATE
|
Advancing a hyperlocal approach to community engagement in climate adaptation
|
PLOS Climate | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000041 June 8, 2022 21 / 26
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assess community risk. While our communities were fairly similar on overall risk scores based
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on the ICRA, when looking at the visual representation of risk on the maps, it is clear that risk
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varies dramatically at the hyperlocal levels of neighborhood parcels or blocks. Additionally, we
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see the ICRA as a tool which can be modified to account for risk in different ways–with
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weightings of risk entered and adjusted based on evaluations by community members or policy makers. This would move the ICRA beyond an equal weighting for each factor, to a tool
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that could prioritize certain concerns. For instance, social vulnerabilities could be weighted
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more heavily to account for ongoing social or economic inequalities that affect individual and
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community ability to adapt to risk.
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Challenges in community-based participatory research during a global
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pandemic
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While we see valuable outcomes from the HyLo method, conducting community based participatory research during a global pandemic is not without challenges. Working in communities
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using digital and online tools reveals both opportunities and the presence of an ongoing digital
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divide and the limits of online collaboration tools. Recent research suggests that online convenings for academic conferences have the potential to increase access and diversity in participation [57–59]. We saw definite advantages as participants were able to join in calls from
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home and even on their commute from work, relieving the burden of finding childcare or
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transportation to a central location, for example. However, some participants struggled with
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viewing and annotating on small screens, such as smart phones, struggled with submitting
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photos to the workshops, and had difficulty accessing digital mapping tools. While we provided trainings on these tools at the start of our workshops, new tools should be mobile device
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friendly, and facilitators need to be adept at finding workarounds.
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We also found that a number of participants were interested in learning more mapping
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skills and in the brief time were able to identify some important intersections between climate
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and social data. We noticed throughout the sessions a progressive advancement of participants’ skillsets and increased levels of observation and assertiveness. We had not expected the
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degree to which participants, who had little to no experience with mapping, would be eager to
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engage with the online maps. This pushed our HyLo team to create a dedicated online map
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portal to enable ongoing participant access and to shift from static to interactive map engagement. County staff members are now also using this HyLo map portal in their resilience work.
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This experience has further inspired us to consider developing a protocol for integrating the
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photovoice work within the map sets to increase the ability to represent hyperlocal issues
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through geotagging and story mapping.
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We had mixed findings on individual and community capacity, but even online we
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increased a sense of community connection and we see potential in this online format for
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increased individual and community capacity; at the same time, would appreciate an opportunity to measure whether engagement, connection, and capacity would improve in face-to-face
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workshops. While our method was able to tap into community concerns and provide voice to
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community members, we would seek to add a measure to assess impact on policy makers as
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well as to monitor implementation of long term solutions.
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Conclusion
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The HyLo method is grounded in an awareness that an urgent need exists for integrated, interdisciplinary knowledge to address the multitude and magnitude of conditions associated with
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climate change, and premised on the understanding that it is possible to elicit and map differential vulnerabilities that impact capacity to adapt [22]. Even more urgent, is the need for the
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PLOS CLIMATE
|
Advancing a hyperlocal approach to community engagement in climate adaptation
|
PLOS Climate | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000041 June 8, 2022 22 / 26
|
co-production with, and application of, knowledge by those most affected by current and
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future climate effects. This approach seeks to engage the community directly in observation,
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knowledge building, and the development of adaptation strategies. Further evaluation of the
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HyLo method and potential community-led solutions can inform further application in new
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circumstances. Outcomes can lead to hyperlocal adaptation initiatives that can ameliorate conditions for communities, providing climate responsive alternatives to improve daily local life
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that address each neighborhood’s unique concerns that are distinct from ongoing or forthcoming large-scale infrastructure projects. Long term, widespread utilization of this approach
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could result in a portfolio of hyperlocal adaptation solutions that can be matched to communities based on similarities across their ICRAs. This work provides a foundation for a new
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approach to policymaking through which the community becomes the change agent. The
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impact of this transformation would expand the landscape of climate adaptation and create
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opportunities for action at multiple levels, across domains, and with potentially powerful physical, social, and economic outcomes.
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