FRC Research Midpoint Updates
On March 16, the Principal Investigators of six research projects and courses reported on their midpoint progress.
Cultural Resource Survey of North Port St. Joe: Students in the Practicum course spent January performing initial historical research and went to Port St. Joe in early February to begin field surveys of approximately 330 properties. The team also held a community meeting and interviews with leaders and residents. Students are currently mapping the cultural resources using GIS and will develop significance and integrity statements in April.
Resilience, Well-being and Natural Resource Reliance in the Greater Port St. Joe Region: The research team has been working on archival research and preliminary development of maps, and made two trips to the region for stakeholder discussions and data gathering. The team will continue working on additional interviews with the fishing industry and restaurants, developing further mapping of the region and assessing the material, cultural and symbolic value of the oyster industry to the area.
Building Trust Through Stories in Port St. Joe: The research team has given a presentation to the North Port St. Joe community group to collaborate on the research process and participation strategies. The team has developed community consent forms and training information sheets and a specific timeline of tasks. The remainder of the semester will include meeting with the participants for photovoice data collection, focus groups and data analysis.
Planning for Resilient Community: Rural Tourism and Home-sharing in Port St. Joe: Doctoral researcher Yuhua Xu spent Spring Break in Port St. Joe, gathering approximately 170 surveys on perspectives about home-sharing. She has spent the semester gathering data from home-sharing companies and Gulf County Department of Tourism, and is continuing to develop recommendations for policy strategies for community resilience and home-sharing economies.
An IoT-Enabled Critical Infrastructure Information Network (ICI-IN) for a Future Resilient City: The research team has met with local government stakeholders for data collection and has surveyed approximately thirty residents so far for understanding of awareness of storm impacts upon infrastructure and determination of critical infrastructure information needs during an event. The team will continue to collect and analyze data for development of the recommendations for critical infrastructure monitoring.
Building a Resilient Urban Park System in Port St. Joe: Landscape Architecture Studio and Dissertation: The Landscape Architecture studio went to Port St. Joe at the end of February to conduct field research and meet with local parks leaders. The students will be developing planning and design proposals for a series of inland parks. In addition, doctoral researcher Kanglin Chen spent Spring Break in Port St. Joe, gathering almost 100 surveys about visitation to parks, amenities needs, and understandings of social resilience through park networks. The remainder of the semester will be spent finalizing research and design proposals, including identification of stormwater capacity and a framework for measuring social benefit.
