About our Research
Where We Live will work with rural communities to better understand how climate-induced changes are affecting them and to co-develop adaptation responses. The project focuses on wildfire, drought, and heat as a set of interrelated impacts. We are approaching the science for the project by comparing how people perceive change in these impacts with instrumented measures of change to determine potential relationships.
Analytical social science and other computational tools will be used to understand why and how people’s experiences of climate-induced change differ from the scientific data. This information will help us develop better models of how heat, drought, and wildfires impact communities and create targeted strategies to help people adapt.
Ultimately, our goal is to provide valuable insights that can help communities become more resilient to climate change. We’ll do this by working closely with residents, emergency management experts, and scientists to understand their needs and priorities.
Two key questions will guide our research:
- How do people’s opinions about climate change compare to the actual data?
- How can we use this information to help communities adapt to climate change?