The Development of DISC (Decision Integration for Strong Communities): An Agile Software Application of Sustainability Indicators for Small and Rural Communities
Small towns and rural communities, like many larger cities, are looking for ways to strengthen their economies, improve quality of life, and build on local assets. They are seeking to create their own path to sustainability that fits their size, geography, and resources and also preserves their distinctive characteristics. In a series of discussions with smaller communities (~1,000-50,000 people), community leaders identified a need for a simple, streamlined and easy to use “dashboard” or a compact set of tools that can help them assess their sustainability profile and identify sustainability issues that may benefit most from targeted improvement projects. To address this need, an integrated team of ecologists, sustainability experts, social scientists and computer scientists collaborated with with urban planners and civic leaders to develop the Decision Integration for Strong Communities (DISC) application. DISC offers relevant information curated to assist smaller communities with addressing their sustainability goals. The DISC project took an agile development approach to tailor existing indicators to better fit the unique needs of small communities. It provides a “dashboard” of community characteristics that serves as an interactive platform from which communities can find relevant information to encourage smart growth planning. To ensure DISC is useful to a variety of smaller and rural communities, EPA project staff reached out to small numbers of interested communities and potential users at different steps of the development process. All of the scientific content available through DISC has been curated from existing environmental indicators for various topics such as the built environment, community involvement, education, natural resource management, equity, hazard vulnerability, housing, local economy, public health, resilience planning, society and transportation. The DISC application has a user-friendly graphical interface that presents information in an accessible, easily understood format. DISC offers users several features such as 1) county-level baseline information related to community sustainability characteristics which can be adjusted using local data or knowledge; 2) information about available resources, including local-level data to help communities shape project planning or investment options; 3) scenario building utility to stimulate planning discussions or provide community outreach material; and 4) an indicator weighting feature to account for community priorities or values. In late 2019, the DISC application was beta tested by potential users representing small communities, academia, EPA Regions and Program Offices, and other state, local and federal entities. In December 2019, DISC will be offered as a downloadable file upon request.