PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Dr. Jenna Jorns, Program Manager, Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessments (GLISA), jljorns@umich.edu
GLISA RECEIVES NOAA GRANT TO SCALE UP COPRODUCTION AND IMPROVE STORMWATER MANAGEMENT IN GREAT LAKES CITIES
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has awarded GLISA a $175,000 grant to improve Great Lakes cities’ use of climate information for stormwater management and to test different forms of engagement in the co-production of usable climate data.
Entitled, “Co-Producing Climate Knowledge and Sustained Engagement in the Great Lakes in Support of Stormwater Management Adaptation,” the grant will enable GLISA and partners to build on previous research that developed a “boundary chain” model to customize climate information for a broad range of regional stakeholders.
While boundary organizations such as GLISA and the Great Lakes Climate Adaptation Network (GLCAN) play a critical role providing decision-support in Great Lakes cities, they face challenges in sustaining engagement and in scaling-up processes that go beyond short-term funding for local projects. There remains a significant need to support the integration of climate information into planning at the community level, and to develop a tested strategy for sustained engagement that can be scaled up to other cities, sectors, and regions at lower costs.
With the support of the grant, GLISA will engage directly with six local governments within the Great Lakes region to:
• Co-produce climate information using an existing vulnerability assessment tool for stormwater management projects; and,
• Assess whether the boundary chain model can reduce transactions costs for scaling-up sustained stakeholder engagement through a series of social experiments that explore different forms of engagement.
GLISA Co-Director Maria Carmen Lemos will lead research as the Principle Investigator. GLISA Program Manager, Jenna Jorns, and Missy Stults, the Sustainability and Innovation Manager for the City of Ann Arbor, will serve as Co-Investigators. GLISA will partner with GLCAN and the Huron River Watershed Council to engage Great Lakes cities and implement the vulnerability assessment.
Outcomes from the grant are expected to advance the resilience of stormwater management in the six project cities and the science of knowledge usability in the context of boundary organizations.
The grant is part of NOAA’s Sectoral Applications Research Program (SARP) solicitation on “Extreme Events Preparedness, Planning, and Adaptation within the Water Sector.” SARP supports interdisciplinary research to advance understanding of how climate variability and change affect key socio-economic sectors, and promotes the application of this new knowledge in climate-related decisions. SARP is under the Climate and Societal Interactions Program of NOAA’s Climate Program Office.