Examples and Tools for Assessment
Infrastructural Resilience Community Needs Assessment in Kansas
To understand community needs, concerns, and assets related to infrastructural resilience driven by social equity, the ARISE project implemented a series of surveys, secondary/archival/community level indicators data gathering, community mapping, focus groups, interviews, and community studios in communities directly supported by the project (Ford, Finney, Seward, Wyandotte, and Johnson Counties) and across broader communities around the state of Kansas. The initiative’s leaders recognized that they needed to be strategic in their engagement and provide opportunities for underrepresented groups in rural and urban counties to be engaged in creating a hierarchy of values for proposing infrastructural resilience planning tools. Thus, they gathered community assessment information from diverse stakeholders, including local households, local government utility leaders, businesses, community residents, multilingual individuals, immigrant groups, and specific groups based on ethnicity, income, gender, and neighborhood differences. The purpose of these community assessment processes was for the group to be responsive by using the knowledge and insights gained to inform long-term strategic action planning for addressing the current and projected infrastructural needs of the most vulnerable Kansans. It is impossible to discuss every community assessment endeavor ARISE implemented due to the need for conciseness, but below are a few representational models.
Decision-Makers Survey and Interviews
During the fall and winter of 2023, the ARISE team administered an online survey to understand local government decision-making around plaznning for community resilience against natural and man-made disasters. Their primary goal was to effectively engage key stakeholders and accurately capture the voices of local government county officials involved in managing utility infrastructure. Multiple components of the existing infrastructure assets, institutional networks, and public policies were examined to understand better their influence on the pre-disaster and post-disaster experiences of diverse communities across Kansas. 288 officials representing 162 cities from 45 Kansas counties responded to questions about the most impactful disaster events, their infrastructural concerns, fiscal measures relevant to infrastructure management, and actions taken by their government to mitigate the impact. Some municipal decision-makers were also interviewed to identify decisions made by governments and other public organizations that shape infrastructural equity and resiliency in Kansas. Key findings reveal how infrastructural decisions are made, the factors that influence them, and the networks of existing community capitals linked to community decision-making. The results indicate that severe windstorms, drought, and winter storms were the most impactful disaster events within the past five (5) years; clean water and electricity infrastructure failure posed the most significant concerns for officials, and these areas received the highest resiliency “hardening” attention; and fiscal concerns were less of an issue compared with workforce sufficiency for handing infrastructural challenges.
Community Studios
ARISE collaborated with its community partners to convene a panel of community residents and interested parties to discuss and provide feedback that informs the study’s design and implementation. Six (6) community studios were held in spring 2024 at locations including western (Dodge City, Garden City, Liberal) and eastern (Kansas City, Overland Park) Kansas. Two (2) additional studios were held with the Spanish-speaking community residents of Garden City and Dodge City. About 85 local community residents and 20 research team members from Kansas State University, Wichita State University, and the University of Kansas attended these studios. Studio attendees engaged in sharing local knowledge and stories about how social equity impacts infrastructural investment in their communities and the consequent impact on disaster resilience. Community asset mapping exercises in these studios explored the “lived” meanings of community resilience and social equity for the communities occupied by the attendees. The results identified categories of their community capital assets (natural, built, cultural, social, financial, human, and political) that support the lifeblood of their communities. Since key findings from the studios are community-specific, summary documents are attached below. To promote equitable practices, studio participants were provided stipends to support their attendance.