Envirocasting: Adapting Global Weather Information for Local Risk Assessment

May 3, 2010 at 10:18 pm · Filed under boundary objects, cognitive justice, community interaction design, cybernetics, design ecology, ecoregionalism, making it public, maps, proposals, public health, symbolic systems, visualization, watercasting

It’s not often that unfunded proposals make their way into disinfecting daylight. Sometimes you try again, and sometimes you just let them waste away among the dusty electrons of your hard drive.

I don’t know which category this one falls into, but I do feel it’s worth sharing and making public. Perhaps someone will even comment with improvements. I can only hope.

In any case, this proposal was dependent on a constellation of partnerships (and funding) to make the project move forward–at least from my perspective. Sometime a little cash can help develop needed projects and spur collaboration. This was a submission to the Knight News Challenge which is supposed to announce its winners sometime in mid-June. Since I know I’m already out of the running, there isn’t really a compelling reason not to share—but please tell me if there is!!!

envirocasting logo

Anyhow, here is most of it—-minus some names to protect the innocent—–except one: this logo was created by Zack Denfeld, and we’ve used it on a variety of projects.  For more, you should visit his launchpad.

Describe your project:
Envirocasting adapts global weather information to the cultural and operational needs of local [international disaster preparedness organization] branch offices and communities, supporting their risk assessment and preparedness needs. A wealth of information exists to support disaster preparedness, but a gap exists between the design of information services and their local use-contexts, limiting widespread use and effectiveness. The benefits of these information services are clear to local decision makers, and they are anxious to put the tools and news sources into practice.

However, exposure to digital news platforms is low, and the capacity to use them in decision making contexts is minimal as a result of this disconnect between design and use.

Envirocasting takes a design anthropology approach to inform the design, distribution, and acquisition of digital weather information services to local decision makers. Design anthropology seeks to understand the role of design artifacts and processes in defining what it means to be human. Using this approach, local patterns of information consumption and culture related to futures, information design, and technological metaphors can be identified, allowing for the design of appropriate services. Design principles as well as specific, local use-applications will aid in the distribution and assessment of weather forecast efficacy. Thus, weather news for risk assessment can flow more precipitously to decision makers, allowing them to coordinate the disaster preparedness efforts more quickly and strategically.

Simulation games for local communities will support learning and the application of information services in context. This provides use-case memories of the future and practice in managing uncertainty with minimal risk.

How will your project improve the way news and information are delivered to geographic communities?

Envirocasting aims to localize climate information by making it simple, non-technical, clear, easy to use, and as meaningful as possible. Maps are relevant when their colors, numbers, icons, and scales are relevant and supported by culture and context. Information that connects with specific actions can be used confidently in planning and decision making. Specific use-cases communicated by local communities will drive the development process and will help weave the digital media fabric with aesthetics, narratives, and metaphors. Games support critical thinking and social play to help decision makers and communities explore the dynamics of news and information-based decisions for climate-related disaster preparedness.

How is your idea innovative? (new or different from what already exists)

Envirocasting innovates by translating connections between design and use. When local conditions refract the design and dissemination of information from distant or multiple sources, innovation is an inherent byproduct. Envirocasting is designed with the mind in mind, understanding cultural legacies that influence the recognition of uncertainty and metaphors. It bridges experience, play, and interactions, creating memories of the future. The project identifies appropriate implementations of open-source digital information services and defines a set of prescriptive resources for innovating across disaster risk contexts and cultural processes based on abstractions and lessons from six local communities in three countries.

What unmet need does your proposal answer?

A fact-finding mission conducted surveys, interviews, meetings and workshops over two-month periods in 2008 and 2009.

Explicit unmet needs include:

1. An Increase in the Accessibility and User-Friendliness of Climate Information Products
2. New Products to Fill Information Gaps for Needs–Starting with Improved Flood Forecasting Tools
3. Training in the Use of Climate Tools and How Climate Information Could Trigger Action Such as:
   • Learning to access and interpret climate information tools.
   • Learning how to monitor seasonal forecasts in conjunction with medium and short-term forecasts.
   • Understanding how to take gradated actions.
   • Channels of communication and decision-making to receive and take action based on time-sensitive climate information.

And don’t take my word for it:

What will you have changed by the end of your project?

More-Measurable outcomes:

• Prototypes that adapt weather information services to local use-contexts.
• Documents that communicate design processes for cross-cultural communication.
• Heuristics or ‘rules-of-thumb’ for the design of climate information services for risk assessment.
• Country and local use-context reports that document specific patterns of information acquisition and behavior.
• Relevance of climate information for local decision-makers.
• Ability to align information with decision and action.
• A folktaxonomy of climate information and categories for creating a cultural consensus model (CCM) to realize translations in cognition and practice among cultural contexts.
• An index of context-specific actions and the values associated with them.

Less-measurable outcomes:

• Perception of the design process and innovation pathways for news and information about climate-driven risks.
• The relationship between information providers, researchers, designers, policy makers, and implementing offices providing the opportunity for continued support, training and dialogue necessary to realize the potential benefits of using climate information.
• Channels of communication between information providers and decision makers and between decision makers and community constituents (incl. digital information services).
• The scope of the implementing organizations to conduct cross-cultural research and information adaptation projects.

How will you measure progress and ultimately success?
The uses of weather and hazard preparedness information can be measured using surveys, interviews, meetings and workshops and compared to current estimates of use and use cases, but those data are useful differently for different people including the decision-makers, their constituents, their supporting agencies, and funders of this project. Thus, we intend to cast progress in varied terms for the different stakeholders and partners.

Some of these guiding questions include:

• What are the iterations, changes, and improvements to existing systems?
• What does the trajectory of individual decision-maker’s tasks or questioning look like?
• How do other elements of the media ecology change and what stakeholders are invoked or leveraged in the process?

Success, on the other hand, is more elusive. Disasters are sporadic and may not always afford a direct link between information effectiveness and risk reduction. However, existing case studies show that these types of information, when combined with specific actions, can lead to significant reductions in both the vulnerability and negative effects of a disaster such as flooding. The key to assessment it to engage in a continual processes where we value choices and transitions in practice. The design of this project take into account the high-stakes involved in the decision-making and information uses by providing opportunities for both high stakes (post-hazard) and low stakes (simulation-games) assessment.

Do you see any risk in the development of your project?

The biggest risk at present is that the organizations listed do not have a history of working together (this is indicated by the generic names rather than their proper ones), but this is also where the opportunity exists. The leadership (particularly of the larger orgs) is wary of their participation in the project without first-hand knowledge of all partners and/or certain funding. This conversation is ongoing at the time of this application and continues to develop. If the proposal moves through to the next round, we should at that point be able to name each of the partners in more specific terms.

Supply-side risks (design-mediated)

• Inability to generate meaning either through lack of empathy or translation of needs to designers
• Research products are not absorbed and implemented during the design processes because they are non-normative, unclear for direct application, left uncommunicated, or other
• Partner coalition denatures from lack of shared goals or mental models
• Emphasis on technological development or information diversification over use-context and user needs
• Existing insights, stakeholders, and methods are unknown or unengaged
• Irrelevance, inability, or non-linkage of digital mediums and meaningful information services
• Cultural heterogenetiy too great for scaling of appropriate information services
• Ability and capacity of project managers to recognize and adapt to other sources of risk
• Expertise of project partners is missing or unleveraged
• Translation of local use-contexts into primary research is distorted or biased

Demand-side risks (user-mediated)

• Low frequency acquisition of technology platforms, information services, and/or symbolic systems
• Scripting of use and application to local decision making is unclear
• Appropriation for local use-cases is nonexistent
• Assembly does not fit into the local context of everyday life
• Cannot be integrated into normal practices, culture, and concerns
• Practice with information and platform is sparse

What is your marketing plan? How will people learn about what you are doing?

The conduits for marketing are, in many respects, already in place. The organizational structure and extent of [intl. disaster preparedness agency] branch offices will facilitate branding and distribution using existing networks of community organization, tactical planning, and response offices. Though the value of the services should be self-evident in the design and cognitive acquisition of the services, the goal is to help users to practice using and applying these information services. We also recognize that aesthetic values can elevate the recognition of value and the maintenance of that value through everyday use. Thus, arriving at these values will be a principle objective for all participants.

In order to increase domain knowledge, the outcomes can be shared among the participants, their centers, and via professional and interest networks including the design research community which actively engages with similar project goals. Because some of the project partners include university centers, schools and research organizations, the outcomes will be shared with emerging professionals including graduate students and visiting fellows.

Tactically, the marketing plan for simulation game-based training is slightly more difficult because it requires additional preparation, training, and presentation. Nonetheless, with a bit of effort, these games will reinforce the marketing strategy for the primary goal of adapting weather information using the same local community branch office network structure. We also expect to develop videos that demonstrate our process as well as the use and value of the informations service under construction. But ultimately, the best marketing will be the effectiveness of the adaptation process.

Is this a one-time experiment or do you think it will continue after the grant? If it is to be self-sustainable, what’s the plan for making that happen?

Envirocasting is the application of a process to translate meaning across cultural contexts with relevance for local concerns. We do not view it as an experimental process so much and an underutilized one. Luckily, there are many resources, case studies, and additional expertise to draw from in the process. Our goal is to assemble them and to draw the pieces together into relevant platforms and prototypes for weather information services.

The project will accomplish this goal as a one-time research project that will publicly document its methods and outcomes as guides so that they can be applied in new use-contexts and for wider information arrays. We fully expect that the different project partners will continue to apply the work and experience in varied ways after the initial project, although they may carry it out to their own ends.

Our method for fostering rhizomatic-like dissemination of the results (and thus, sustainability) is to link with additional strategic partners whose networks span varied social groups, languages, use-contexts, and concerns. Furthermore, the acquisition and integration of the research (as well as the information services it supports) can be broadly advocated from a policy perspective because successes arise from its application and benefit in specific, local communities. The overall plan for sustainability is to demonstrate that these information service platforms reduce risk by enabling decisive action before pending hazards become disasters. If this is demonstrated, sustainability will ensue, even if not in the form described in this proposal.

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Water Supply in Bangalore, 1998-2001

March 31, 2009 at 3:48 pm · Filed under ecoregionalism, india, making it public, visualization, watercasting

wattersupplybangalore8801

This graph represents the difference between demand and supply in Bangalore from the years 1988-2001. Blue circles are per capita supply of water in Liters per day.

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Ulat Bansi: Designing Water Futures

January 8, 2009 at 9:39 am · Filed under Design, cinema, community interaction design, ecoregionalism, india, proposals, sculpture, teaching and learning, watercasting

Ulat bansi from CEMA on Vimeo.

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A Manifesto for Water

December 10, 2008 at 8:55 pm · Filed under cognitive justice, ecoregionalism, heterarchy, proposals, watercasting

We agree that the global water crisis presents a communications design challenge of urgent immensity. From where we sit, paani (water), ghats (steps), vidhushak (trixter), matkas (containers), ulat bansi (upside-down story), and melas (fairs) are the mediums of our message.

However,

Current public understanding about the use and management of water is broadly defined by embodied practice, everyday experiences, and faith. The perspective that developing regions have outmoded experiences and assumptions ignores the reality of daily practice and serves to create a hierarchy of meaning that places certain forms of water use and practice above others despite the apparent and real effectiveness of available options.

Rather than “powerful, fact-based narratives”, we believe in narratives that change and respond to their audiences and allow for multiple interpretations. Sarcasm, word play, exaggeration, juxtaposition, false-belief, humor, optimism and rebellion are tactics needed to engage and inform diverse, international audiences of varying demographics and geographies. Facts may be starting points, but because we cannot control interpretation, they are not ends in themselves.

We believe that the water crisis is a social problem that cannot only be solved by scientific or technological means or other rational approaches. Irrational responses are therefore positive, justified, and appropriate.

The water crisis is not in need of novelty or innovation. It needs relevant visual identities, mantras, mythologies and stories carried by relevant mediums that entertain, inform, and inspire audiences that are socially, politically, and economically isolated.

Because policy makers lack political will and personal motivation to implement existing, effective, small, scalable solutions, we will always lack the full scope of raw field data and the presentation tools needed to make water crisis understandable and actionable for policy makers.

We value varied groups, not select groups. We value practice beyond thought. Leaders in our opinion are those that use personal invention and creativity to affect everyday practice and demonstrate how political, social, and economic barriers to water availability can be overcome.

The crisis is a complex mix of global and local implications for matter and meaning. It therefore requires responses that connect many locations from the most broad panoramic view to the most minute, localized interaction.

Four main issues characterize the water crisis:

1. The problem is not scarcity. We have an abundance of water. The problem is access limited by changing ecological conditions, costs of technology, and social, economic and political disparities.

2. The water crisis is fundamentally complicated by outmoded ideas of rights and ownership. These concepts seek to create additional divisions and further amplify problems of access.

3. Inequitable distribution and out-of-equilibrium use cycles make available water unpotable and unsafe for living.

4. Standards do not currently represent or account for contemporary water use. These standards create incompatibilities in both meaning and matter when policy is made and when technology is developed to respond to the crisis. The existence of current standards, their role in international trade, and their high cost of acquisition and participation means that so-called developing regions are placed at a disadvantage.

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Watercasting Day 2

September 29, 2008 at 8:28 pm · Filed under boundary objects, cognitive justice, community interaction design, design ecology, interaction, interdisciplinary, making it public, maps, network entrepreneurship, teaching and learning, watercasting

The first day was organized to enumerate problems and the criteria by which to evaluate responses to those problems. The second day focused on our responses as ‘designers’ and the methods that we could use to find tactical responses to the difficult problems posed by water (and the lack thereof).

We began by discussing what it is that designers do. I asked students what is is that artists and designers do? I asked the students to describe what they felt was their strongest characteristic as an artist/ designer. Surprisingly, almost all of them described characteristics that were domain-free and overwhelmingly social. I showed them Burt’s (2002) concept from sociology of a network entrepreneur, and we used his assessment tool to see how individual personalities and the class as a whole tended towards network entrepreneurship.

We continued by discussing Bowker and Star’s (1999) article about classifications an boundary objects. I expanded the initial discussion by showing them examples according to Star and Griesemer’s four types of boundary objects. We came to realize that boundary objects do and could play an important role in mediating different groups, particularly those that might have conflicting goals.

We concluded the morning session by sharing candidate solutions to the difficult problems posed by water. A couple of these dealt with making groundwater (and its hidden concerns) visible ‘above the ground’. This would be a metaphor to build on later that day.

In the afternoon, I showed them Paris: Invisible City and navigated through the multimedia map- a demonstration of all that helps to construct Paris as a city. With this in hand, we questioned how we come to describe the components of a city and how existing ways of seeing are, perhaps, constrained by existing representations. We discussed sex differences in navigation as one example relating to how maps are rendered and what it means for cognitive justice. We started to see that all of the components of a city- its water systems, street systems, entertainment systems- are constructed in numerous places and not just at the sites of consumption.

As the afternoon waned, we adjourned to the water cooler in the corner of the room where we were able to have a refreshing drink and a new perspective on the networks that supported our taking that sip. We reflected and surmised deeply all of the actions and passing of signs, documents, and behaviors that are needed to make sure that the water cooler is there when we need it, that it tells a particular story, and what we miss when we take is existence for granted. WE connected it to the electricity plant, to the staff that keep it clean and full of water, to a history associating the color blue with water, to the friendliness of ‘eco friendly’ technology, to the construction people who built the building, to the architects and the central planning board whose permits probably had something to do with the fact that it was in the southwest corner and very near the bathrooms whose water systems run all alongside the building there.

We all shared what technical skills we had after that…from illustration, film shooting and editing, writing, 3-D rendering, and so on. We decided that we would make boundary objects as our designs and solutions for creating awareness and solving problems associated with water’s future. We decided we would make films to share our scenarios because they carry stories and build empathy. We decided that we would be like the tide, starting from shore and moving out to sea, returning to shore with our collections and documentation, moving back out again during the interim, and then back again…to sea what we can see.

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Watercasting Day 1

September 29, 2008 at 6:49 pm · Filed under boundary objects, cognitive justice, community interaction design, design ecology, interaction, interdisciplinary, making it public, network entrepreneurship, teaching and learning, watercasting

We started by looking at the neologism ‘watercasting’, coined for the purposing of re-imagining what it is that we would be doing in the class.  Casting for the purpose of making a mold, a cast that one would find in theatre or film, to broadcast, and even futurecasting were brought up by some of the participants.

We discussed difficult and wicked problems by comparing them to tame ones such as one would find in science and engineering.  We formed groups based on complementary zodiac signs (in part to introduce forms of classification and grouping).  Students were asked to develop symbols or logos for each of the characteristics of difficult problems as described in Horst and Rittel (1973).  This required them not only to have read but to work toward synthesizing that information in the form of a visual response.

We ended the morning session by brainstorming and expanding a list of difficult problems associated with water. Pairs of students articulated the problems and then as a class we grouped them according to the themes they seemed to be suggesting.

After lunch I introduced the students to twitter and kluster, software platforms for 1) assembling a symphony of interactions around water in the case of twitter, and 2) choosing among proposed solutions in the case of kluster.

I asked students to come to the class with examples of good and bad design from around Srishti.  They described many instances, and for a minute it seemed as if it would be a ‘crib’ session about the things the students didn’t like.  Instead, we found out that things we might perceive as being ‘designed’ were often vestigial or happenstance.  We also used examples of so-called bad design to recognize was it is that we value that seemed to be missing.  In this way we turned these examples into opportunities as we transitioned into finding a list of criteria that we could use to evaluate or responses to difficult problems over the course of the semester.

We ended the afternoon session by compiling a list of these criteria as a first step towards understanding what kinds of traits our designs should have if they were going to be progressive responses.

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