CHI Speaker Series: Marynia Kolak on Environmental Inequality Formation and Participatory Design: Developin

Integrating social, economic, health, and environmental factors at small area scales for dynamic interaction and exploration is integral to assessing the various dimensions of community vulnerability to environmental injustice, as well as enabling decision-making by policymakers, health advocates, as well as communities most impacted. To better understand climate challenges and advocate for improved policy and resources, communities need more accessible data, the ability to integrate their own stories, and carefully incorporated frameworks that strive to ensure that injustice is not reproduced in the research process itself. The ChiVes platform, an open-source mapping application linking dozens of indicators at the neighbourhood level in Chicago, serves as a decentralized spatial data infrastructure focused on stakeholder relationships, integrating data and processes that consider the social and historical aspects of environmental injustice. ChiVes links air pollution and temperature measures from multiple projects alongside greenspace, built environment, housing, health, historical, and resource data, and also includes a resource guide and community report tool. It has been used to support tree plantings, make the case for cooling centres, and as a teaching tool in environmental justice. A new flexible, multi-criterion “index builder” enables residents to develop new metrics with available data on the fly. Using co-design participatory approaches and inspired by the environmental inequality formation framework, the ChiVes platform interface continues to be refined by city residents. Future research in spatial decision support frameworks supporting environmental justice may benefit from participatory design and Open Science approaches.