Analyze

Over half of the neighborhoods in Santa Ana (shown in pink on the map below), California are designated disadvantaged communities (DACs) by CalEnviroScreen, the leading tool for assessing environmental injustice in California. GREEN-MPNA, a community-based organization in Santa Ana, is working to change this through its DAC-X campaign: an action-oriented movement to reduce disadvantage through pollution reduction, health equity, economic justice, and inclusive governance. Aware of the risks of gentrification, the goal is to x-out disadvantage in a way that empowers rather than displaces current communities. The University of California EcoGovLab has worked closely with GREEN-MPNA on the design and development of the DAC-X campaign. The four pillars of the campaign were chosen, in part, because they align with the State of California’s own criteria for designating communities as disadvantaged. DAC-X’s design also draws together a diverse array of advocacy organizations, government agencies and schools working against issues that contribute to disadvantage, knitting together threads of work that often run in parallel. The long term goal is to increase these organizations’ collective capacity to address disadvantage – in a way that recognizes the intersectionalities and cross-scale interactions that produce it. One tactic we have used to advance the DAC-X campaign is the staging of Environmental Justice Stakeholder Meetings that bring relevant governmental agencies together in one room to speak and respond to Santa Ana residents.Thus far, these meetings have focused on pollution reduction and inclusive governance. Going forward, we will continue to grow our network of alliances in Santa Ana by organizing Environmental Justice Stakeholder Meetings to address other pillars of the DAC-X campaign, bringing for example, health equity advocates to the table, or educational institutions that could support workforce development. The DAC-X campaign itself – and this poster – also results from an alliance – between EcoGovLab (Browne, Adams, Fortun) and GREEN-MPNA (Flores, Gutierrez & Rea).

Browne, Aiden, James Adam, Jose Rea and Kim Fortun. 2023. "GREEN-MPNA's DAC-X Campaign for Environmental Justice: Designing for Alliance." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

The system was built to serve organizations and individuals with humanitarian goals. The system gathers data from report, reviews, and users and compiles it into comprehensible information to help inform decision-making for humanitarian concerns. Portions of the app also focus on education and technical support for field researchers looking to collect large quantities of data.

The system is primarily used by researchers, scholars, and organizations with humanitarian interests. The app also has functions which would attract users that are beginning research and do not have established connections within the field as the app provides a support system.

The development of Twine was funded primarily through donations from individual investors interested in the data sharing aspects of the software and humanitarian aid organizations who benefit from the accessible data.

Twine provides information and software to set up compatible data collection systems that pool information into the larger system, which the app then makes available to its users. The system also includes a publishing and collaboration aspect which allows groups of people from all over the globe to access the same data and report on the findings together.

Data visualization is primarily determined by the type of data being gathered and the system for data collection being used. The app integrates data in order to both make large quantities of data easily viewable and understood, as well as compare studies with existing data stored on the system.

Users must be registered with the site to access any of the available features, and the registration is free. Once registered, users can immediately begin gathering their own data, analyzing the existing information, publishing reports or reviewing existing publications. The system also has several active data collection locations that are only available to registered users.

The technical aspects of the site are quite complex, as the system has over 1,000 active data sites to compile in addition to the reports and reviews stored. The data collection software is the main function that the software supports as it relieves the users from needing their own data bank to work off of.  The publication functions are also supported by the storage system of the app allowing all users to access all publications.

The system has partners including UNAIDS, a branch of UNISEF, International Medical Corps, Medecins Du Monde, AAHI, and other humanitarian organizations. The support of these groups both financially and with the user community is important to maintain the app as an active site for research and development. The technical aspects of the site also heavily rely on the data storage method, which is not mentioned but would require massive amounts of memory as well as safeguards to prevent data loss on the app servers.

There are thousands of data collection apps that use similar technical system as Twine, one more popular app is Fulcrum which uses the same real time collection ideas and integration between existing data and new data. Fulcrum however is aimed towards medium businesses that need to coordinate between employees. There also exists several open source options that also allow for independent data collection.