53-7 Leveraging Community Survey Data: A Tool for Meaningful Community Engagement to Enhance Climate Resilience and Sustainability

Session: Community Engaged Research for Environmental Sustainability and Community Resilience

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Research increasingly highlights that effective climate change adaptation requires broad public support and engagement from local communities to become politically and socially feasible and yield equitable benefits. Ensuring communities have access to data and information about local risks empowers them to advocate for their needs and actively shape decisions that affect their neighborhoods. 

The Austin Area Sustainability Indicators (A2SI) project addresses this need by working in partnership with Go Austin/Vamos Austin (GAVA), a community organization, to collect data from underserved communities and connect the findings back to them. A2SI measures quality of life and sustainability metrics to address regional challenges in Central Texas. A2SI integrates federal (e.g., census data) and geospatial data (e.g., environmental hazard exposure) with community surveys across six counties, focusing on local environmental challenges (e.g., climate change, hazard exposure), social issues (e.g., emergency preparedness, health), and economic barriers (e.g., economic disparities, housing affordability). Surveys are conducted every two to three years with input from stakeholders to create a robust dataset serving researchers, decisionmakers, community organizations, and residents. In our latest wave of data collection, we worked with GAVA to oversample residents of two underserved neighborhoods in Austin. Our analysis highlights disparities in environmental and climate vulnerability between underserved communities and the broader Austin population, which is exacerbated by adverse socioeconomic conditions.  

This presentation will illustrate how community-centered, evidence-based research serves as a valuable tool to empower community members by translating complex data into accessible information aligned with residents’ concerns. We showcase this approach through our collaboration with GAVA in which we (1) received community input on survey design, (2) directly recruited members from two underserved Austin neighborhoods, and (3) connect findings back to the community through a workshop. In the workshop, community organizers and researchers discussed whether findings reflect organizers’ experience in the communities they serve and how to translate findings into action. A2SI offers a foundation for targeted outreach, allowing cities and organizations to thoughtfully communicate relevant risks, foster local climate awareness, validate residents’ lived experiences, and mobilize residents to action. Integrating community voices into data collection, analysis, and application ensures that research is reflective of community realities and actionable in shaping local climate adaptation efforts, fostering more resilient, informed, and prepared communities. 

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Program. Vol. 57, No. 6, 2025

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-8832

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