The EPA Decision Integration for Strong Communities (Disc) Application: A Tool to Support Community Resilience and Well-Being (Presentation)

EPA’s Region 10 and Office of Research and Development collaborated with Oregon and Washington communities on a Sustainability Snapshot Project. The project has taken an iterative, agile development approach to tailor existing indicators to the needs of small communities. The resulting “dashboard” is called “Decision Integration for Strong Communities” or DISC. It has been designed to encourage smart growth and offer relevant and readily-available information. DISC is a downloadable application of existing indicators that offers relevant, local (county) and readily-available information to assist smaller communities to address their resilience/development goals.

This presentation describes DISC and walks though the features of DISC for potential users. The application represents an overall community well-being/resilience profile, as well as component scores for community characteristics relating to the topic areas of interest. If communities have more local specific information, they can substitute their data and tailor the application to their specific needs. The “snapshot” of community condition is available as a pdf “tear sheet”. The DISC application provides on-going information and spurs conversation about the actions a community can take and helps track the beneficial community impacts of work being done towards attaining local priorities. This presentation invites potential users to evaluate DISC and offer suggestions to enhance its ability to offer useful information to promote community vitality.

Impact/Purpose

The EPA is fostering community smart growth and resilience strategies to help communities grow in ways that expand economic opportunity while protecting human health and the environment. EPA’s Region 10 and EPA’s Office of Research and Development engaged interested communities to help develop the Sustainability Snapshot Project. The project has taken an iterative, agile development approach to tailor existing indicators to the needs of small communities. The resulting “dashboard” is called “Decision Integration for Strong Communities” or DISC. I t has been designed to encourage smart growth and offer relevant and readily-available information. DISC is a downloadable application of existing indicators that offers relevant, local (county) and readily-available information to assist smaller communities to address their resilience/development goals. DISC is designed to assist communities, researchers, Agency Program and Regional offices, and other partners and stakeholders. The intended communities’ audience for the DISC application is communities with populations generally less than 50,000. This application will provide support for making balanced decisions to address the long-term needs for these communities, especially those which are rural, tribal or without resources that are available to larger cities.

Citation

Olszyk, D., A. Brookes, L. Harwell, S. Jenkins, M. McCullough, V. Phan, V. Salazar, Lisa M Smith, Kevin Summers, AND C. Thorson. The EPA Decision Integration for Strong Communities (Disc) Application: A Tool to Support Community Resilience and Well-Being (Presentation). 2020 International City Managers Association, West Coast Regional Conference, Vancouver, WA, March 18 - 20, 2020.

• The EPA Decision Integration for Strong Communities (DISC) Application: A Tool to Support Community Resilience and Well-Being (ICMA Regional Conference, 2020) (PDF)  (30  pp, 3.7 MB, about PDF)

Related Link(s)

• The Development of DISC (Decision Integration for Strong Communities): An Agile Software Application of Sustainability Indicators for Small and Rural Communities