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Vol. 1, No. 8 – Spring & Summer 2020
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UREX PRODUCTS
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PEOPLE CONNECTED
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Thank you all for your contributions to the UREx SRN’s Year 5 Annual Report to NSF! Here are some (of the innumerable!) Year 5 highlights:
- Publications: 43 UREx publications (postdocs and grad students co-authored 21 of these!)
- Presentations: >100 member presentations (and several sessions led) at local, national, and international conferences
- Scenarios Workshops: Held Scenarios Workshop 1 and 2 for Portland, and Scenarios Workshop 2 for Hermosillo and Valdivia
- Reports: Completed Scenarios Workshop 1 Reports for all remaining cities, 2019-2020 EDWG Evaluation Report, and SRN Multi-Modal Mentorship Guidelines
- Data & Visualization: Created the UREx Data Portal with city/thematic landing pages, data policies, procedures, security, and eRAMS instructions, and continued development of the UREx DataViz platform to synthesize city data
- Opportunities: Awarded 8 early career researchers an opportunity to organize an Early Career Symposium committee to design and host 4 virtual symposia in summer-fall 2020, and 2020-2021 Grad Grants to 6 grad students
- Leveraged UREx funding for several grant opportunities: Two NSF INTERN Supplements; NSF Accel-Net: Nature-Based Solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene (NATURA); NSF Convergence: Converging SETS for Urban Resilience
This comprehensive report is a great resource for learning about the amazing work happening across our large network. We encourage you to peruse it, and reach out to Angela Grobstein if you see a group and/or project that you would like to connect with.
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5TH ANNUAL ALL-HANDS MEETING
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The UREx SRN hosted its fifth annual All-Hands Meeting (AHM) in a virtual format on April 1-2, 2020. Although we were disappointed to cancel our in-person AHM (a meeting that provides tremendous collaborative value to the network), we were able to quickly pivot to a virtual meeting that turned out to be a huge success with participation from a variety of researchers and stakeholders – over 100 researchers, practitioners, and EAC members from 35+ institutions and organizations – including folks that would not have been able to participate otherwise. Catch up on the sessions by following the respective links below!
Day 1: Plenary
Day 2: Workshops/Sessions
This annual meeting has always been a great opportunity to share UREx-related research and learn about what others are doing in this large, distributed network, and we hope to be able to reschedule at a later time. We will keep the network informed of any AHM updates.
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COMMUNICATING OUR RESEARCH
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UREx SRN Data Portal
The UREx SRN is moving forward with a two-pronged approach for future collaborations and access for sharing data beyond the UREx network. UREx data is first uploaded to eRAMS, for archival purposes, and are placed in the corresponding city, working group, or task force folders. The frontend portrayal is a UREx Data Portal featuring city, working group, and task force landing pages that describe products in detail using a metadata profile that is searchable on the website.
UREx SRN data from all researchers must be added as it is completed to these locations throughout YR6 of the project; however, special considerations and protections for data are of utmost concern. Prior to upload of data, any questions about privacy considerations can be directed to the Data Management Postdoc, Dr. Nasir Ahmad. Advanced data visualizations are also accommodated by the UREx Urban Systems lab, and instruction for all steps for including data can be found at https://data.urexsrn.net/.
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Open Educational Resource
Community Resilience to Climate Change: Theory, Research and Practice
Dana Hellman, UREx Graduate Fellow at Portland State University, and Vivek Shandas, UREx Portland City Co-Lead, created an Open Educational Resource (OER) reader intended for graduate or higher-level undergraduate university courses in climate change resilience, adaptation, and/or planning. The OER, which was originally designed for a Climate Resilience course led by Vivek Shandas, includes full text-reproductions of 19 open-access journal articles, as well as student exercises and classroom discussion topics. While the material is geared toward students in urban and regional planning, it may also be of interest to students of urban studies, public health, geography, political science, sociology, risk management, and others.
This is a great educational resource that we hope UREx instructors will use and adapt it for their own classes. Check out the full publication details here and feel free to reach out to Dana Hellman (dhellman@pdx.edu) and/or Vivek Shandas (vshandas@pdx.edu) with any questions.
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UREx SRN Best Practices
The Education & Diversity Working Group (EDWG) has developed a set of best practices that include guidelines and policies for co-producing knowledge in the network through collaboration and the publication of network findings. Since its inception, the UREx SRN has produced international, multi-institutional, and cross-sector works by various members in the network. A multi-modal mentorship model (featured below) also developed organically via network research of collaborators and research fellows. Guidelines for best practices in collaboration, publication, participation in mentorship relations, and data are provided for guidance through each of these areas: https://sustainability.asu.edu/urbanresilience/best-practices/.
Multi-modal Mentorship Guidelines
Multi-modal mentorship is the aspect of the UREx SRN that encourages multi-directional mentorship among official advisors, collaborators, postdocs, students, and peers. Throughout the network’s existence, many mentor-protégé relationships have been formed resulting in research, reporting, and publication on urban flooding, coastal storms, regional droughts, and extreme heat waves. By observing and querying these successful interdisciplinary research relationships, the UREx SRN developed and embraced a multi-modal mentorship model. This form of mentorship was judged to be successful by both mentors and mentees.
The SRN Multi-modal Mentorship Guidelines and Checklists can be used by any person involved in a research network or large, multi-investigator research project who seeks guidance on establishing an effective mentorship experience.
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A talented group of UREx Fellows have organized a series of symposia throughout the summer and fall of 2020 that is bringing together early-career researchers, students, and practitioners interested in understanding and exploring the dynamic and interconnected social, ecological and technological (SET) elements of green infrastructure (GI). The ultimate goal of the symposia series, Get Ready, Get SET: GI!, is to convene and cultivate the next generation of urban resilience thinkers and leaders as they collectively work to develop a more holistic and inclusive approach to GI implementation and research.
The three main outcomes of the symposium are:
- a SETS manifesto, from the perspective of early career leaders;
- visualizations of SETS GI implementation; and
- a living document cataloging the ideal conditions to grow the next generation of SETS leaders, ideally leading to new research/funding proposals
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In spring 2020, UREx fellows and associates were invited to participate in an annual evaluation survey fielded by the UOEEE (in collaboration with the Education & Diversity Working Group) exploring fellows’ research and professional opportunities, skill development, mentorship experiences, satisfaction with the network, and impacts on future plans and preparation. Twenty-one fellows responded to the survey and reported diverse collaboration and research experiences which advanced their skill development and confidence. Fellows also reported meaningful impacts of network participation on refining their career goals and preparing for the job market. Finally, 100% of respondents reported satisfaction with their overall experience in the UREx SRN (see figure).
Additionally, UREx faculty were invited to complete a survey about their perceptions of network progress and professional/skill development opportunities afforded to fellows. Faculty provided positive feedback about opportunities for fellow growth and development and further reported quite a bit of progress, on average (~4 on a 5-point scale), toward all three EDWG goals.
Looking forward, the UOEEE has a few upcoming evaluation activities planned. UREx Graduate, Postdoc, and Emeritus Fellows: We plan to conduct focus groups postponed from spring 2020 in the fall. In the event of an in-person “All Hands Meeting,” the focus groups will be conducted then. Alternatively, please be on the lookout for an invitation to participate virtually!
The UOEEE would like to thank the entire network for being responsive and providing evaluation data amidst the onset of a global pandemic and very challenging time for all.
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2020 GRAD GRANT SPOTLIGHT
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Adam Andresen
MS in Sustainability, Arizona State University
Understanding Spatial Variability in Household Failure: A Case Study Comparison Across U.S. Cities
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Grad grant funds were used to deploy a survey through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk documenting the frequency and duration of power failure events, the negative health impacts, and the response of electrical utilities for three major metropolitan areas (Detroit, MI; Miami, FL; Phoenix, AZ). The hypothesis for this research is that those of lower socioeconomic status and minority demographics experience more frequent and longer power outages. The survey ran for 45 days, and 896 were demographically similar to the recent 2018 ACS 5-year estimates in Detroit and Phoenix. However, Miami was dissimilar because there was greater participation from Hispanics/Latinos. Most participants reported not owning a generator (75.6%), but have a carbon monoxide detector in their home (59.3%). Participants primarily experienced 1-5 outages within the last 5 years (65.3%) with more participants indicating their most recent and longest outages lasting 1-6 hours (45.3% and 37.2%, respectively). During their longest outage, participants reported not leaving their home (61.2%), having to throw food out (49.7%), and not receiving any assistance (74.3%). Currently, preliminary statistical analysis, using the Kruskal-Wallis test, indicated that minority demographics have experienced longer outages more recently, statistically significant in Detroit and Miami (p-value<0.05) but not significant in Phoenix. A manuscript is in progress for this research to be published in the Journal of Natural Hazards. A supplementary publication is also in-progress to be published in Environmental Research Letters.
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FELLOW RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT
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Melissa Guardaro, UREx SRN Emeritus Fellow
PhD in Sustainability, Arizona State University
Dr. Melissa Guardaro conducts research on extreme heat and urban heat islands focusing on the metropolitan Phoenix area. Her interdisciplinary research and collaboration with cities, community-based organizations and other stakeholders led to the creation of neighborhood specific heat action plans for three Arizona communities: Edison-East Lake, Mesa Care, and Lindo Park-Roesley Park. Melissa now works as an Assistant Research Professor at the ASU Wrigley Institute of Sustainability, continuing her work on adaptive capacity, especially for the most heat-vulnerable communities, heat mitigation and adaptation initiatives with cities, and co-leads a regional heat preparedness and resilience group focusing on providing heat relief during the coronavirus pandemic.
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Robert Hobbins, UREx SRN Fellow
PhD Candidate in Sustainability, Arizona State University
Knowledge to action: Resilience to extreme weather events in Latin American and Caribbean cities
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The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded two INTERN Supplemental Awards over the past year to support research conducted by Robert at the USDA Forest Service International Institute of Tropical Forestry in San Juan. By synthesizing knowledge created by the UREx SRN and the San Juan Urban Long Term Research Area (San Juan ULTRA) projects, this internship aims to create actionable knowledge that local community leaders and policymakers can use to build a more just, equitable, connected, food and energy secure, and resilient San Juan. Deliverables will include the San Juan Transition Toolkit that synthesizes key challenges faced by San Juan; the UREx future visions and narratives; maps of key strategies to be implemented throughout the municipality to achieve those visions; renderings of the future scenarios and strategies; green infrastructure strategies from other cities; and financial resources to implement on-the-ground projects. The toolkit is a work-in-progress but is expected to be complete, including its translation into Spanish, by the end of June. A standalone Green Infrastructure Toolkit is also being created. These transition toolkits will ideally serve as examples for UREx cities to create similar toolkits – increasing the knowledge uptake of the many invaluable resources co-produced by the UREx over the past five years.
Other key contributors to the San Juan Transitions Toolkit development include: Tischa Muñoz-Erickson (Mentor), Pablo Méndez-Lázaro, Mandy Kuhn, Maria Maurer, and Jan Cordero
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INTERNATIONAL POSTDOC RESEARCH
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Yuliya Dzyuban, PhD
Postdoc, Singapore Management University
Dr. Yuliya Dzyuban is a sustainability scientist, who currently works as a Research Fellow at Singapore Management University. She is part of the interdisciplinary research project, Cooling Singapore, dedicated to developing solutions to address the urban heat challenge in Singapore. Yuliya received her PhD from Arizona State University and is UREx SRN alumna. Her research concentrated on the relationship between extremely hot climate, urban design and perceptions of thermal comfort. She has conducted research in Phoenix, U.S., and Hermosillo, Mexico, which are the hottest cities in the North America. Yuliya has a background in architecture and was awarded Fulbright Scholarship to pursue MS in Sustainability in the Urban Environment at the City University of New York. Following that, she worked in an architecture office in New York City before starting her PhD.
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URBAN RESILIENCE READING GROUP (URRG)
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The URRG hosted a Career Round table format for the spring semester. Postdoc and students invited professionals working in the field of urban resilience in order to learn about their research and career paths. Students paired up based on their research interests and prepared the round table event for class time by requesting readings from the professional, sharing them with classmates, and arranging discussion questions. Each student pair had the opportunity to host a round table session, guiding an open dialog with the class and the visiting professional. Students also introduced themselves to all visitors by providing brief elevator pitches of their research interests and desired career paths. Feedback from students on the course format showed that they had advanced their knowledge of career paths after graduation and had also gained comfort in communicating with industry professionals.
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