Join diverse leaders from across tech, design, business, government, and nonprofits for a workshop on building digital tools for disaster relief and emergency preparedness in Puerto Rico. The Opportunity Project is a process for engaging government, communities, and the technology industry to create digital tools that address our greatest challenges as a nation. This process helps to empower people with technology, make government data more accessible and user-friendly, and facilitate cross-sector collaboration to build new digital solutions for the public.
Data access is vital for emergency preparedness, disaster relief and recovery efforts in Puerto Rico. In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico has faced unprecedented challenges in aligning federal and local support, including utilizing data for decision-making and properly distributing billions of dollars of federal funding for recovery efforts. Access to complete, accurate, and usable data is critical for businesses, government and communities to progress forward on the island, and empower local communities with technology and information that can make them more prepared in the future
Limited or lack of access to and usability of data is affecting the ability to properly allocate resources for recovery and rebuild efforts in the island.
The workshop is designed to tackle this challenge head-on, and will kick off a longer-term process called The Opportunity Project.
The Opportunity Project works through 12-week collaborative sprints that bring technology developers, communities, and government together to solve problems using open data.
Participants in the kick-off workshop may choose, but are not required to, join a 12-week sprint following this workshop to continue building out solutions initiated or discussed during the workshop,focusing on one or more of the following general problem statements. All of these interrelated topics are important for emergency preparedness, response, and resilience efforts.
U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Transportation
CHALLENGE: Develop resources that help state, local, and tribal governments to create and maintain open address point data, which is critical for emergency responders and Censuses and surveys that allocate billions of dollars in federal funding. These resources might include: (1) Tools that can be used in the field and in the office to collect, validate, maintain and share data. (2) “Seed” data that can serve as a starting point for data collection and can be shared openly (address lists, address point data, parcel data, structure outlines, imagery. (3) Linkages to open data sharing platforms.
APPLICATION TO PUERTO RICO: Puerto Rico faces unique challenges for maintaining free and open local address data. Collaborate with stakeholders from local government and community organizations to develop applications of data collection and technology tools that respond to local needs in PR.
USDA Forest Service
CHALLENGE: Develop tools that visualize and provide access to the patterns, overlaps, and gaps in environmental stewardship efforts in order to identify local civic groups that support community quality of life and well-being, strengthen community resilience and emergency preparedness, and amplify positive outcomes.
APPLICATION TO PUERTO RICO: Collaborate with local partners in San Juan from the Forest Service, universities, and community groups who contributed to this data set, are involved in local environmental stewardship, or would be the end users of tools leveraging this data set to develop useful, user-friendly product concepts.
FEMA
CHALLENGE: Create digital tools to encourage individuals and community leaders to gain a better understanding of national and community hazards and threats, and enable the public to take appropriate preparedness actions.
APPLICATION TO PUERTO RICO: Utilize federal, state and local data for addressing pressing needs that will help with preparedness for future events, as well as recovery and resilience -- for example, this might include identifying and prioritizing locations still without power or roofs.
Led by the Census Open Innovation Labs at the U.S. Census Bureau, The Opportunity Project connects tech developers, local leaders, and non-profits with problem statements on issues like jobs, transportation, housing, healthcare, education and others. and facilitates user-centered tech development sprints to create new digital solutions.
Anyone can replicate this process. Local leaders, technologists, students, or anyone interested in collaborating on technology and data-driven solutions can start a project. View The Opportunity Project toolkit, a step-by-step guide to the process used by the Department of Commerce project team, and adapt it for your own project.
Browse the tools built through The Opportunity Project to learn more. You can also adopt these tools in your community, help to expand them, or help to connect them with target end users.
opportunity.census.gov/projects | email: census.opportunityproject@census.gov