Objectives

The work in this project seeks to engage a variety of stakeholders in the Tampa Bay region who are affected by social, environmental, and/or economic impacts of sea level rise. Through gaming and visualizations, grounded in agent-based modeling that simulates the dynamics and uncertainty of responses to the driving forces of sea level change, this work attempts to create a more connected community by convening these stakeholders and having them work together towards crafting resilient responses to the possible outcomes of sea level rise (SLR) scenarios.

Stone Soup: To foster community engagement we propose a kind of “Stone Soup” project (see Figure below). In the Stone Soup parable that is found in Japanese and Old English traditions, a group of travelers come to a village in a time of famine. They offer to make a wonderful stone soup for all, if the villagers each contribute what ingredients they have. The “stone” is a catalyst. The “soup” is an emergent, commonly owned and shared resource that is greater than any villager could assemble alone. We will use this metaphor throughout the proposal to explain the catalyst (stone), key resources (ingredients), emergent resource (soup), and specific outcomes (cup of soup) from the project.

Objectives: At the most basic level, the objective of this project is to act as the "stone" to catalyze the "soup": development of the capacity of stakeholders and communities in the Tampa Bay region to collaborate, anticipate, and shape that future landscape in the best interests of Tampa Bay’s citizens. More specifically, the project has two interrelated stone soup initiatives, illustrated in Figure above.

1. The first is using the "stone" of the assembled expertise of the PI team on computational modeling and visualization of SLR scenarios to catalyze the "soup" of a Digital Common Property Resource (DCPR). A DCPR is a common pool resource in the form of a database of existing data sets relevant to SLR, made useful to researchers and stakeholders through the interface of a computational model.
2. The second is to use the "stone" of the expertise of the PI team on governance of transdisciplinary projects to catalyze the "soup" of an Action Research Ensemble. An Action Research Ensemble is a group of stakeholders and researchers with the requisite variety to comprehend and explore the complexity of future SLR scenarios, employing a set of organizational practices that enable heedful relating and serious play.

Outcomes: From these two initiatives, the project will generate two sets of intended outcomes, or “cups of soup” (see Figure above). One set focuses on the University of South Florida (USF) as an anchor institution and catalyst. The second set focuses on stakeholders to the Tampa Bay region.

For the Tampa Bay region, we aim to:

1. use project involvement by stakeholders and stakeholder-specific reports to foster actionable knowledge on SLR;
2. generate an app interface and other visualizations of SLR as a means of engaging the public;
3. use project involvement by community organizations and social science researchers as a means to keep marginalized and vulnerable populations central to SLR responses;
4. develop a playable game as a means of engaging the public around SLR.

Within USF, the project intends to:

1. use the DCPR to enable disciplinary research related to SLR;
2. use the project management structure to catalyze spin-off transdisciplinary scholarship on emergent topics;
3. use project involvement to enhance the ability of stakeholders affected by SLR to work together to envision and enact responses;
4. use project assessment and evaluation to prototype and refine an organizational model of university-community collaboration around SLR.

To achieve these goals, we organize our research efforts into five thrusts:

• Thrust 1: Computational Scenario Planning
• Thrust 2: Visualization
• Thrust 3: DCPR and Data Privacy
• Thrust 4: Social Dimensions
• Thrust 5: Gaming