Community-Based Research for Infrastructure Planning in the Arctic

ISE Associate Professor Tom Sharkey recently visited Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow), Alaska in order to understand the community’s perspective on emergency response in the Arctic and how the types of infrastructure development that would most benefit the communities of the North Slope Borough of Alaska.  As part of this visit, Professor Sharkey and colleagues met with people working in emergency response, risk management, and infrastructure planning for the North Slope Borough as well as representatives from various indigenous community groups.  An important part of this research was to identify infrastructure that would both increase emergency response capabilities and provide benefits to the communities.   

This community-based research was led by Marie Lowe, University of Alaska Anchorage, who is a collaborator of Professors Sharkey, Grabowski, and Wallace on an interdisciplinary NSF-funded research project on emergency response in the Arctic.  Professor Lowe was assisted by PhD student Daniel Jimenez, University of Texas at San Antonio.