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Communicating drought: Innovating approaches through engagement with decision makers
  • Rebecca Ward,
  • Kirsten Lackstrom,
  • Corey Davis
Rebecca Ward
North Carolina State University Raleigh

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Kirsten Lackstrom
University of South Carolina
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Corey Davis
North Carolina State University Raleigh
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Abstract

During recent droughts in North Carolina, decision makers have articulated needs for drought information, including current or anticipated impacts, geographic extent and timing, and how and who monitors drought in the state. This is despite the abundance of online information and data that can answer these questions. Feedback from sectors heavily impacted by drought in the state - namely, agriculture, forestry, and water resources - suggests that information users perceive existing drought information as unavailable, inaccessible, or insufficient to meet their needs. We are collaborating on a project to increase the accessibility of existing information through the development of resources that resonate with water resource managers, extension agents, and other decision makers in North Carolina, are discoverable through their preferred communication channels, and help them and their constituents better understand and respond to drought events. We identified and prioritized new information resource ideas through an initial needs assessment conducted via surveys and webinars with stakeholders in target sectors. We then developed and refined prototypes (e.g., infographics, factsheets, story maps) through multiple rounds of feedback, which included focus group discussions and eye tracking studies. Key findings of the project include (1) scientific information must be translated into less-technical terms to be useful, but users must be able to connect to the original source of the information; (2) decision makers want current conditions placed into a longer temporal context that includes the recent past (trends over past weeks to months) and anticipated changes to conditions in the future (forecasts with lead times of days to months); and (3) despite the increasing popularity of social media as a way to share information, more traditional formats (e.g., local broadcast and news media, websites) are still valuable to decision makers. In this presentation, we will describe project outcomes, including our process for engaging with decision makers to co-produce new drought information resources and strategies for creating and disseminating these to ensure that they will last beyond the project’s end date.