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Decision Integration for Strong Communities (DISC): An Application to assist well-being and resilience
Citation:
Wilson, W., D. Olszyk, A. Brookes, L. Harwell, S. Jenkins, M. McCullough, V. Phan, V. Salazar, L. Smith, J. Summers, AND C. Thorson. Decision Integration for Strong Communities (DISC): An Application to assist well-being and resilience. Tribal Lands and Environment Forum, Palm Springs, CA, August 19 - 22, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
Communities want to be more sustainable; to grow and prosper by enhancing community economic and social vitality, while maintaining environmental integrity. Much of the current US sustainability planning targets large metropolitan areas, and various tools have been developed to help them address their goals. Thus, to especially address the unique priorities and constraints of small or rural communities (under 50,000 people), we have developed a downloadable computer application [Decision Integration for Strong Communities (DISC)] that offers readily accessible information that is meaningful and useful them as they make decisions that will impact their members’ way of life. The DISC tool goal areas (local economy, environmental resource management, built environment, public health, community involvement, society, and resilience) include a wide variety of indicators that show a community’s condition. Collaboration and feedback from community leaders is necessary to determine if DISC is a useful tool to improve sustainability in small and rural communities. While we will seek input from a variety of types of small community leaders, this presentation at the 2019 national Tribal Lands and Environment Forum in Palm Springs will provide a unique opportunity for interaction with Native American tribal community partners to help ensure that DISC addresses their priorities and goals.
Description:
Many communities have a goal to be more sustainable (i.e. maintaining and enhancing community economic and social vitality, along with environmental integrity). However, smaller (<~50,000 population) and especially rural and tribal communities, may lack the resources to accomplish their sustainability goals. EPA’s Office and Research and Development and EPA Region 10 have developed a downloadable computer application named DISC (Decisions Integration for Strong Communities) which provides, a) a basic sustainability index with social, economic and environmental dimensions that can be generated with minimal effort from a community, b) a mechanism to create scenarios to examine changes in sustainability characteristics based on proposed community decisions, and c) links to resources to help understand and enhance the sustainability of their community. Community engagement in an agile environment has been vital to the development of DISC. The DISC application, including sustainability indicators, scenario building, and especially output which provides links to government, nonprofit and other resources are provided in this presentation. In this session we invite Native American tribal evaluation and input to help ensure that DISC addresses their priorities and goals.