Schools as Community Resilience Hubs

2021 National Science Foundation Grant: Schools as Community Resilience Hubs

Inspired by Acosta’s work in the City of Oakland that enabled school sites to be accessible to local, public-safety focused community groups, GCTC leadership applied to the National Science Foundation for a planning grant to test the potential of creating Resilience Hubs in local neighborhood schools (see also https://www.weaccel.io/global-city-teams-challenge).

The application proposed to develop a resilience model focused on a specific school in Portland, Oregon. Buckman Elementary School was chosen due to its unique, diverse demographics, a willing school principal, and government and organization leaders eager to explore the concept.

WeAccel (Acosta and Marcus) took lead roles to discover and engage community and government leaders, NGO’s, non-profits and other stakeholders in the work of this grant opportunity.

Georgia Tech was the sponsoring educational applicant, partnering with GCTC. The university sponsor’s goal was to explore the potential of creating a digital twin to further the community’s resilience goals.

Unfortunately, the subsequent NSF grant application for an implementation grant in 2023 failed. NSF’s conclusion was that insufficient stakeholder organizing had been done to warrant the technology-heavy application.

What We Learned:

  • Communication, Mobility and Energy are the three most critical systems that must be interoperable and effective in the case of an emergency. These interoperable systems largely do not exist today.

  • As identified by the Urban Sustainable Directors Network, resilience hubs must be prepared to provide needed community services today, in the event of an emergency or disaster, and to rebuild after the event. The need for resilience hubs to provide services “today” is not largely recognized by government or university stakeholders.

  • Substantially more government funding is essential to build Resilience Hub Networks that can effectively ensure the safety of the broader community, especially vulnerable populations, today and during emergencies and disasters.

  • The need for open, interoperable systems that benefit the community is foundational to the need for Digital Public Infrastructure.

Want to learn more about the results of our Portland Schools as Community Resilience Hubs project?

  • A wrap-up video of the project: https://vimeo.com/817759181 Produced by Georgia Tech, this video emphasizes the creation of digital twins as a more effective digital communication tool.

  • What is a Digital Twin? https://vimeo.com/408582579 Produced by Georgia Tech’s Network Dynamics Lab.